Belief- with a pinch of salt.
Belief is something intrinsic in all of us and becomes a part of us without us even noticing it sometimes. Belief can be defined as something which we think is right. One simple real life example is that my wife tells me not to cut nails after dark and when I ask for the reason she says she doesn’t know. You can call it her belief that anyone should not cut the nails after dark. There is a simple logic for it that before electricity one could not see properly in dim light and the nail clipping equipment were crude so to avoid cuts people avoided cutting nails after dark. But all her life and her immediate forefather’s lives have seen electricity but this belief still continues. We can say it to be a superstitious belief now. Every culture must be having some beliefs like this which is going on for generations though it is logically obsolete.
Another real life example is that of my last article ‘A flaw in the grand design’ which evoked responses from me being 'antichrist' to 'my soul burning in hell'. This also is the outcome of belief about the existence of God. Neither of us has seen god but I don’t believe in god and the one who commented believes in god. Though neither of us has seen god but still one decides to believe in it and one not to believe in it. The decision of both to belief or not to belief can be as per what we have been taught by parents to believe or by anyone else or may be due to some applied logic which may be right or wrong.
Most of our beliefs are formed in childhood as our mind is uncorrupted and can be easily manipulated to believe or not to believe something. To come out of those beliefs are the most difficult as those beliefs tend to affect our behavior. Seldom do we go from one belief to neutrality. One set of belief which we found out to be wrong is generally overshadowed by another set of belief which we now consider as right. One example of the ill effects of misunderstood belief can be found in Islam. In Islam it is taught since child hood that there is only one God and that is Allah and he is the greatest. Continuous indoctrination of this creates a change in behavior where it becomes easy to convince one to kill and die for religion.
Belief also acts as a filter to all the information we receive. We receive so much information everyday and we either accept them or not accept them based on our belief about it. This affects our liking and disliking of a person or group of people. This way we gravitate towards people whose belief matches with ours. A strong belief coupled with power has caused great destructions in this world. White supremacy is a belief that led to killing and slavery of aboriginal in America. The Aryan race supremacy is a belief which led Hitler to kill Jews and attack other countries. A belief in supremacy of God caused the Crusade war.
Belief slowly becomes so engrained in our thoughts that it becomes behavior and difficult to change. Only when an individual understands what he believes and why does he believe then only he can decide on changing it. Though it is difficult to change but one can do it by taking small changes in life in the shape of forming new habit. I had a firm belief that I cannot be a writer but slowly through read cash I started writing and now though I cannot claim to be a writer but just ‘I write’. This journey started with my first article had has been continuing since then. Though I had this writer’s block type of thing and stopped writing two times but I still came back each time. So small changes in thought process followed by an effort to form a habit helped me in doing something which I never thought I would do or capable of doing.
So whatever is your belief, please question it from time to time, especially belief’s which are having a negative impact on you.
Education is overvalued in practical life
I don’t know about your country but in India you don’t need an educational qualification to become a member of parliament that means a law maker. No educational qualification means actually no educational qualification that is you can be an illiterate technically and be one of the law makers of the country. Not only law maker but you can also be the Prime Minister of the country who runs the country, who takes all major decisions pertaining to the country, meets heads of states of other countries and discusses both bilateral issues and world issues. The one, whose decision affects the lives of its citizens as well as relationship with other countries.
This doesn’t mean that all the law makers are illiterate or less educated. Most of them are graduate, many of them post graduate but quite a few have done only school. This makes me think if education is necessary at all to be successful in life. Now there are some fields like science where you are a misfit if you are not educated. The field of science today is such that you have to be sufficiently intelligent to understand what is going on.
In business, education is said to be not important. If one is hard working, and having passion and dedication he can be a successful businessman. Every country has example of such entrepreneurs. The average entrepreneur can be successful in a business that is completely different from his field of study because there vision is fine tuned towards a business mindset.
Sadly the most educated lot is the employees whose job is to make the businessman successful. They are selected on the basis of their education and experience in a particular field and they manage the affairs of the business. The entrepreneur is just like a light house who guides the employees’ effort in the right direction. The cream of the most educated lot that is the doctorates and the post doctorates are however outside the domain of corporate employees as they do not have mush demand there except those related to research. These people steer towards teaching research and professorship.
Then there are the self employed types (not entrepreneurs) like shop owners and franchisee owners who also do not require much education. These are mostly handed over from father to son and are mostly not scalable or very difficult to scale up unless one is exceptionally talented. For example one can have a good bakery shop but he may not have the vision or money to scale it up to a chain of 50 bakery shops in different cities.
In a developing country like India 90 percent of the working population is employee and 7 percent are self employed and 3 percent are entrepreneurs. A good measure of a country’s progress would be to see how many entrepreneurs are being made. So we find that the most educated lot is not the one who is earning the most, if we consider money as a measure of success. Also these employees don’t always have the job satisfaction but entrepreneurs mostly have entrepreneur satisfaction.
Now coming back to politics, why educational qualification has not been made one of the eligibility to become a law maker? One logic that is given is that more than education what is required is the wisdom and understanding and the vision to run a country or a constituency. These three things do not require an education though it may be an added benefit. These three things generally come from maturity and age.
Whether it is a political set up or a business, both function on selecting intelligent and educated people to do the ground work and the decision taking is reserved by the top brass. That’s why when applying for a job there is invariably a requirement of educational qualification but to be the top brass there is no such qualification.
Coming back to the main question, is education required to be successful in life- though different people may have different definition of success but the most common practical parameter is money and whatever money can buy. Another parameter is that the least you are answerable to the boss the more successful you are. In this regard the entrepreneur is himself the boss and the politician once elected is not quite answerable to the people who voted him to power until the next elections.
A flaw in the grand design
The general thinking is that God made everything perfect but it is us humans who sinned. Satan tricked us to sin and thereafter it continued from generation to generation. It not only engulfed us but the earth also.
Now we have to deal with 3 types of evil. First is the natural evil which manifests in the form of earthquake, volcanic eruptions, floods, diseases etc. Second is the social evil which manifests in the form of hunger, homelessness, poverty. Third is the moral evil which manifests in the form of war, cruelty, and various forms of crime.
So basically now it is our self created problem though induced by Satan so we have to deal with it. Scriptures which are linked to God say that maybe at the end of time he will do something about it and liberate us from the sins. No one really knows how long it will be. In the mean time God is ready to punish us in hell for the wrong we are doing here.
Again basically what God means is that I will not interfere but I will surely punish you. God will not directly deal with Satan to control him; maybe it is beyond the capability of God to tackle Satan. That can only happen when both are equally powerful or as it seems today; Satan is more powerful than God. It can also be interpreted as God will only look after those in heaven who followed his teachings on Earth and the rest can go to hell. The problem is that God’s timeline and human timeline are of vastly different magnitude so humans have to do this cycle of hell and earth many times.
Still we are supposed to believe that he is in full control sitting somewhere on a throne and must be enjoying the show on earth. The above version is mostly as per Christianity and Islamic teachings.
Now, Hindu and Buddhist teachings say that, unless we endure the bad then only we will understand the importance and beauty of the good. So it is important to undergo pain and suffering and darkness in order to enjoy the light of truth, happiness and bliss. The pain and suffering automatically comes because of our past Karma. Here also we deal with an un-interfering God who wants us to go through many lifecycles until we realize the bliss. He is also ready with the concept of heaven and hell.
The next question arises is why when we look around we see the teachings of these God failing everywhere, why is there so much suffering. God’s reply is that he has a grand design for us which is presently beyond our understanding. Our job is to just trust him and follow his teachings, though we do not know exactly where it will lead to. So we are to have faith that he will deal with Satan at the right time till then let Satan do whatever havoc he can. But going by past experience of his failure to control Satan I don’t know how much he will be successful when the ‘right time’ comes. When times are tough on a day to day basis it is hope which helps mankind which manifests into faith as there is nothing concrete to cling on to.
In the mean time we are to trust the omnipotent, benevolent (and other such adjectives) God not in just one lifetime but across many life times. God should have given a little more thinking about his grand design. I think if he had just controlled Satan at the proper time and let people live a happy and peaceful life without the evils, we wouldn’t have minded that at all.
The price of security
Surveillance on the population is quite an old concept. It has been happening since humans created the governance system. Previously it was to keep tab on political opponents or to control crime or counter intelligence or keep an eye on own ministers who might formant trouble for the ruler. Mostly it was non intrusive and conducted in subtle ways through human intelligence collection as technology was not there. Things were dictatorial then so the ruler was not answerable to anyone. Even after the democratic governments formed surveillance continued as a tool of governance. Even today it continues only the purpose may differ from country to country.
9/11 came and it changed everything. Now governments need not be subtle about it. With each major terrorist incident the surveillance is getting tighter with more powers given to security and intelligence agencies to poke their nose around. I remember days from 30 years back. At airports in India there were no baggage scanners. So while ‘checking in’ for boarding pass there used to be a few security personnel in plain clothes watching the passengers and if they doubted anyone then that person had to get his suitcase opened and checked by them. I don’t know but maybe because of my look and body language at least 70 percent of the times I had to go through the procedure and the other passengers also looked at me doubtfully. Now scanning of luggage along with body search and restriction to carry various items are normal.
Security is a primary concern of citizens as nobody likes to stay in a permanent state of insecurity; it may be from theft or terrorist action. Now citizens demand more security from governments. Now it has become increasingly normal for governments to spy on its own citizens, collect information and store them and to get inside our electronic devices without our knowledge. Now governments can read our emails, listen to our calls, track our social media and access our financial details if they wish to do so.
After the 9/11 the US government conducted the biggest racial profiling exercise where immigration data was used to check Arab and muslim citizens. More than 80,000 names were registered and 8,000 were called for interview and more than 5000 were made to undergo preventive detention but not a single terrorist was found. So now they spread the surveillance on everyone instead of focusing on a select suspected group. That amounts to a huge amount of data and is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The Boston marathon bomber was already on the FBI radar but still he succeeded in his mission.
Now the question arises as to how much the security and intelligence agencies can be trust about individual privacy and security. We know that intelligence agencies can hack your computer and phones without you even knowing it. They can read your messages, chats, and email and even listen to your conversations or see your internet search history without you knowing it. We may say that if I have not done anything wrong then why I should worry being tracked. But this mindset can give governments more power, more than require and can lead to oppression. The most common fall out of this is that anti terrorism laws are misused for non terrorism activities. The governments use these laws as per their own whims and fancy, mostly to subdue dissent and criticizing government policies. Search of properties without warrant and detention is also commonly misused.
Though the purpose of these laws may be for the good of all but we need to be careful where we may unintentionally cross the line and accept a surveillance government. CC TV cameras with facial recognition technology can track our every movement; every digital payment will be monitored. In fact this would be one of the purpose of CBDC. But still governments cannot stop a few people from making a bomb in their basement.
Now we are at the cross roads of how much freedom and privacy we are ready to give up for the sake of security. Or else our fear of life and property through terrorist action may just erode the fundamental rights and liberties enshrined in our democracy.
The more things change the more they remain the same
Travelling is a passion for a large chunk of population around the world. Depending on the financial condition it may involve only travelling within the country or travelling around the world. It may involve travelling for work or pleasure. Whenever we travel we do it to see new places, meet new people and experience new culture. Singapore and England is completely different in all aspects but Human intelligence is hardwired to see patterns in what seem to be random.
Slowly we understand these patterns connecting seemingly completely unrelated places and people. At the basic human level the things are actually the same everywhere. All around the world people do the same thing- they travel to work, use public transport, make friends, eat out, fall in love, fight, and quarrel, feel jealous, and get angry and so on. In every country the concept of home is also the same- a place we feel safe, happy.
As per science it is called entropy- things can be chaotic in many ways but it has one way to fall in order.
If we consider this in different time frames and different places then also it stands the test of time. Life is same as it was in England in 17th century and what it is now in Mexico City. The instrument may change according to place and time but the tune will be the same everywhere. The old consider the past as the glorious days and the young look out to the future to be bright. Both consider the present to be chaotic and the past or the future to be ‘in order’. The old think that though there was less comfort in the past but till is was better, the young think that the future will be far better than the present.
Why does this happen? There must be something that is binding all of us across space and time. The human nature has stood the same across all ages irrespective of the progress we see in the outside world. The emotions and nature of human beings don’t change easily while the things on the outside change in a faster rate. Even today we have the same problems as people had 3000 years ago and we seek answers the same questions we asked a millennium ago. The archer shot the arrow 500 years ago for the same purpose as a soldier would fire a bullet today. We are fighting for the same causes as we fought 2000 years ago. We love our children the same way as we loved 100 generations ago.
We can say that the human nature remains the same but development moves ahead. We can say that the problems of this world and the individual human being are because of this disparity. The two important things – emotion and intelligence are moving at different speed. While emotions are still stagnant, intelligence is moving exponentially with time. May be that is the reason why our lives are getting complicated day by day.
It may be possible that the present status of our lives will continue this way until humans make the next evolutionary jump. As far as historical records are available we humans have behaved like this since our evolution from primates, and I don’t see any change in future if we stay in the present evolutionary form. Our emotional side had a major jump from the primates and therefore it is expected that the next evolutionary jump will bring the next set of emotional changes, not before that.
There is only subjective changes in the world and not objective changes. It can be put this way also as – a person who changes will witness changes, if a person doesn’t change then he will not see any change. If change has to happen then the only thing that is required to be changed is - themselves.
The freedom of no opinion
Off late I have started to follow this strategy of not to make any opinion about anything, well almost anything that is happening around me. Trust me it is a very difficult task when you are bombarded with so much information through the television and a plethora of social media and it becomes difficult to get the fact out of fiction.
I noticed that whenever I was forming an opinion on anything and starting to have a discussion with my friends or family then the mind is always in an agitated state. In most cases the opinions are formed on information whose validity is doubtful, to validate it I will have to go deeper. That requires time which I am not willing to invest on it. So the opinions were based on whatever concise information I was getting. Once I formed an opinion then the natural tendency during discussion is to get a positive validation. It becomes difficult to accept counter arguments even if those counter arguments are correct. It all boils down to winning the argument and this leads to often heated discussion. In the hindsight when I think about it, I find that those opinions and discussions were actually on very trivial matters having little or no impact on my life. But it sure caused a desire to win the argument, an agitated mind and a few bruises to my ego.
So I changed myself and started my strategy of ‘no opinion’. It is not an easy task. First, I tried to cut off myself from any source of unnecessary information. I only skim through the news paper, listen to news on TV very less and reduce my social media. So when the source is limited then my chance of forming an opinion is also limited and therefore the desire to discuss and the attempt to win are also considerably reduced. On a daily basis so much is happening all around that if I start forming opinion on everything then it will only affect my peace of mind. If I am forming a positive opinion then it is ok but if I am forming a negative opinion then it starts hovering over my mind. Of all the opinions I am forming on anything, I am not in a position to change any of that, either I accept it or do not accept it. If I accept it then well and good but If I do not accept it then also I do not have any option but to accept it with a pinch of salt. For example, if the govt decides to increase lock down in my area then I will have to accept it whether I like it or not, whatever my opinion might be.
But another point to be kept in mind is that, having no opinion, should not lead to apathy because apathy is related to the feeling of helplessness. It is just that so many things happening around us like office gossip, celebrity news, political scandals etc need not require an opinion from my side. Only form opinions on things you are interested or invested in. By invested in I do not mean monetarily but things which you are passionate about. Rest all things should not clutter your mind unnecessarily.
Opinions are not something that is etched on stone. It can change; it is not a fact but is just a point of view on something, it is mostly biased and we can very well live without having any opinion about something. On the other hand it gives mental peace, it gives a freedom to focus our thoughts on things we like and matter in our life. So I have no reduced having and giving opinion on 99 percent of issues which I encounter in daily life and I am really enjoying it.
A father's bequeath to son- my portfolio
Everyone here has some sort of crypto portfolio depending on their strategy and risk taking appetite and the funds available with them. I am not a big fish here, so my funds are limited and therefore I cannot play around much. For this reason I do not FOMO in to every promising coin to make some quick buck. I am rather the hodler mentality type where I can live with a steady holding and smaller gains. My purpose is to select some coins which I feel will be good for long term holding, may be 2 to 3 more market cycles. I tried my hand in trading a bit and it reinforced my doubt that I would suck at it. So let me disclose my portfolio.
1) **BITCOIN**- BTC being the king of the market I have bought some of it, in fact it is only in decimals. The purpose I bought it is because being the first crypto currency that dreamt of creating a decentralized financial environment, just as a mark of honor to that concept. The dream to dare to challenge the biggest financial institutions and even governments deserves some respect.
2) **ETHEREUM**- I am holding some eth because it has the potential to take the dream of Satoshi further ahead and make it a reality for everyone. Whereas BTC due to its inherent limitation has become a store value, eth has the potential to take crypto currency to the homes of everyone.
3) **CHAINLINK**- It being the biggest oracle service provider and all big and small projects has a requirement for it. It has a great and proactive team and is always innovating. So I feel that it has the potential to grow as the crypto ecosystem grows.
4) **MATIC (POLYGON)** - Matic is presently the reigning king of layer 2 solution which has at least temporarily given a fix to the high eth fees. With its rebranding as Polygon, it is trying to create its own defi ecosystem within the layer 2 solution and has been pretty successful till now. This year nothing could beat the price action of matic.
5) **CEL**- It is the main token of Celsius network and has its use in the reward percentage.
6) **POLKADOT**- I am also holding pokladot in the same expectation as cardano- as a potential ‘eth of 2015’. I did not buy eth in those initial days so what I could make out that Polkadot and cardano has the potential to be the next eth, may be not as a competitor but as a parallel smart contract solution platform. So basically I am trying my luck with these two to be as profitable as eth.
7) **CARDANO**- I am holding some cardano as it is developing as a potential ‘eth of 2015’. The technology behind cardano is said to be answering the shortcomings of eth at present, and it is also developing as a complete ecosystem with option for eth based projects to seamlessly switch to cardano network if they wish to. It will be cheaper and faster than Ethereum. I am staking my cardano in atomic wallet.
8) **CAKE**- Since Eth fees skyrocketed I shifted some of my investments to Binance smart chain. Pancakeswap being the biggest one on BSC I decided to stick to that and that too the primary token on Pancakeswap that is cake token. I am staking some which gives me decent rewards which I use to buy the above mentioned coins. So till now I have been able to create this passive source to augment my portfolio. I hold a little bit of BNB to pay the fees here.
9) **UST**- It is an algorithmic based stable coin on anchor protocol that gives around 18-20 percent APY. Some of my withdrawals from cake are transferred to UST as a hedge against bear market.
10) **Bitcoin cash (BCH)** - My BCH holding is closest to my heart as it is my earning from this platform and some additional purchases when the price dips a lot. BCH has the most use case particularly as a peer to peer payment system provided it is accepted, but unfortunately not in India. I am hodling all my BCH as it mimics BTC price movement and therefore I expect it to go higher.
The first 6 have been kept in Celsius Network where I earn some interest out of my holdings every week, so basically my portfolio is increasing slowly. Though it is a Cefi but it is a very good and transparent platform so chances or rug pull are almost nil. As it is not a defi so there is no chance of exploiting smart contracts to siphon out funds. It is very much security conscious so it takes all the steps to prevent hacks. It is now introducing insurance to protect investor funds. In app swap and credit card is coming so CN in itself will be a self sufficient ecosystem catering to its customers. It also has no withdrawal fees of any kind. With time and situation this list can be reviewed also, adding new and dropping old one's.
My crypto is spread across three platforms, Celsius Network, Anchor Protocol and Pancakeswap as a risk management and diversification. My aim has been to choose coins based on use cases as I believe as the market will mature and evolve then most shitcoins will be extinct and only the coins with good use cases will survive. Though there are many other coins with good use cases but I did not over stretch my portfolio due to funds limitation.
The Indian Government has still not made its position clear on crypto currency. If it decides to ban it then I will have no other option but to sell them perforce and say bye bye to crypto. Otherwise my aim is to create a system where I can gather interest income every month to supplement my pension. If the government favors then I will continue increasing my portfolio till 2023 and then start taking out my monthly profits in fiat. So I am in the accumulation phase now. The ultimate aim would be to bequeath my crypto currency to my son so that he also enjoys the passive income source or whatever he wants to do with it.
Market cycle emotions
There are many who have started investing in crypto currency during the last six months. Every Bull Run comes with increased news coverage about insane returns from crypto currency. Some get interested enough to join this run. Those who joined in Nov/Dec 2020 were already in the midst of a bull run and have reaped good gains from the market. As most run after the immediate gains so they seldom study the long term behavior of market which is a big mistake. So this will be my effort to bring perspective about market cycles for these people.
It is said that the bull market starts with ‘halving’ of bitcoin output. The recent halving has been in first half of 2020. As the output gets halved so the incremental new bitcoin flowing into the market is reduced. This creates a situation of lower supply and therefore higher demand and this spills over to all other coins thereby starting another bull run. This Bull Run continues for about one and a half years when the market gets overpriced and the final profit booking comes leading to a severe correction in the market and followed by a prolonged bear market. In this case it is supposed to extend till early 2024 when the next ‘halving’ will take place. This is the most layman description of a market cycle.
This Bull Run consists of several ups and downs till the market top is reached. Traders use this to go long or short. Same is the case with the bear phase which also has several ups and downs which are played by traders. But those long term hodlers just ride the waves and accumulate more when prices are less which is called dollar cost averaging. This group of people don’t play with the short term trends, they move from one market cycle to the next. Both the traders and hodlers know that the market will ultimately tank 70-80 percent in the bull market wiping out most of the gains. And the next market cycle will be making many times more ‘all time high’ than this one. But this journey of a market cycle is an emotional roller coaster ride, let’s see.
**Disbelief**. When the previous bear run is coming to an end then the market starts making upward movement but most will not believe it and consider it as the minor waves on the chart. It is difficult to identify which set of green candles will mark the beginning of the bull market.
**Hope**. When the price starts going above the bear market price band then the hope comes that an overall recovery is coming. In charts people study the accumulation bands and when the price starts staying above the accumulation band for some days or weeks then the hope is cemented that we are actually seeing the first lights of a new bull run.
**Optimism**. When this happens then optimism sets in the market and people feel confident in pouring in new money into the market thus the price starts to pump. Here you will see lots of you tube videos coming with chart analysis of the upcoming Bull Run.
**Belief**. This optimism transforms into belief after more confirmations of green candles and other technical indicators. This is when more money comes in pushing prices further high.
**Thrill**. This is the stage when the market prints long green candles day after day and the unrealized profit in their portfolio tracker shoots up. Now people who have exhausted their funds start playing with margin money which is a dangerous thing.
**Euphoria**. Many late comers actually join here when the market is in euphoria and shooting up like anything. This is the stage of fear of missing out. This is where many toss aside their plan and ride the emotional wave. Media shows the amazing Bull Run with interviews of the new crypto millionaires. But knowledgeable ones have actually booking some profits. They sense the mood of the market and start booking profit when the market is still going up and will do so when it starts going down.
**Complacency**. So ultimately the time comes when the market corrects from the top. Now it may make sideways movement or an immediate dead cat bounce. But people stay hopeful that this is just a dip and the market will recover again and make newer highs. Now we may be just in such a situation. The mindset of most is still in the euphoria state.
**Anxiety**. This is when market falls further and the realization starts to set in that ultimately the Bull Run is over. We have reached the market cycle top. Now traders are more into shorting the market bringing the price further down. The hopefuls still hang on eventually losing more of the gains they made.
**Denial**. Many still refuse to heed the signs and stay hopeful, hoping for a recovery. Some start selling with a remarkable reduced gains or even loss.
**Panic and anger**. This is the stage when panic selling starts when everyone is convinced that the Bull Run is over and try to recover whatever gain or loss they get. Most here sell at a loss thus ending their dream in crypto and then vow never to come back.
**Depression**. This is the time when the market touches the bottom. Those who entered with borrowed money are ruined. Those who entered with life savings are ruined. This actually marks the beginning of the accumulation zone for the next Bull Run and this period can be a long one, more than two years. But smart investors recognize it as an opportunity to make millions in the next run up. The stupid ones stare in disbelief.
This amounts to the end of a highly emotional drama where the smart ones enjoy it and the foolish ones crib and cry. Those new ones should be aware of this whole cycle and be mentally prepared to face it. If you cannot bear the down market then you do not have any right enjoy the bull market.
The F word
Sometimes I feel like laughing at how society brainwashes us especially in teenage. I can’t say about other parts of the world but here in India things work this way. In school days the definition of success is getting secured job. That secured job mostly means becoming a doctor or engineer. So the most common question till you reach class 10 is – what do you want to be a doctor or an engineer? That is a leading question which limits the mind of the children in thinking that these two are the only options to be successful in life. After class 10 a student has to choose the stream of study for the next 2 years- science, commerce or humanities. Those getting the highest marks can choose science and after 2 years can take a shot at the entrance exam for engineering or medical. So not able to get a score good enough for getting admission in science stream comes as a shocker first to the parents and then to the child. The first definition of failure which the child understands starts here.
Our concept of success and failure in life is powered by societal compulsions and pressure. Most succumb to it for the whole life and gets stuck in the grind of job, salary and a life of pay check to pay check. Some lucky few in their mid twenties understand the stupidity of this and try to carve a new definition and path for themselves. These are the ones who move towards being self employed, business or even starting YouTube channel and blogging etc. While the first group chose a path of what the society defines as success, the second group gives themselves the freedom to try and fail and then retry. Those who succeeded in this endeavor are the ones who become rich and famous and the first group people once they reach their forties start cribbing when they see these successful people that they missed the opportunity to try when they were in there twenties.
In the formative years of life failure is never an option. If you are getting less marks and just passing then you are considered as a failure. It is pointed out that you will never land up a good job it your performance stays like this. This creates insecurity when it comes from their parents who are the closest. Then comes the entrance exams for admission to various course and government jobs. There is cut throat competition considering the high population and the craze for government jobs. Not clearing any of these means even after graduation you are without any secured job. Then comes the mediocre private jobs which pay very less. In India 80 percent of the working class population is stuck in this. All these stages which starts from 18 years to about 28 years are considered a failure if you are not able to achieve either of them. Now the societal pressure of being stigmatized as a failure is so high that often it gets impossible to get over it and start afresh in a new direction.
So once you start schooling and till the late twenties failure is not an option, not for you, your family and society. If only in these stages of life it is said to the children that this is not failure but these are attempts to succeed. If you do not succeed it does not mean that you are a failure. Failure is when you stop trying. There is a gap between not succeeding and failure but that gap is not shown to the children. This is where the children miss the freedom of failure. They are just given two options success and failure.
Now failure can be classified in two ways, one is when you take action but do not get the result you wanted and second is not taking action at all. In the first case it will lead to disappointment. This disappointment comes from the expectations you had from your effort to succeed or the motive. And the motive is based on the reason you chose to try something. When we ask the right questions after failing this way then we get the real answers, if we are true to over selves. Was I trying this due to some pressure or was I trying to satisfy my ego or did I really like what I was trying to achieve. It is not necessary that it will always be the third option, but one has to be truthful to self to accept the first two options. These types of failures are not actually failures but very important learning lessons. One who is truthful will ultimately succeed.
The second case is not trying at all or giving up mid way. Most of us fall in this category. Even this is not that bad. When I decided to write daily I followed for some time but then there were gap days in between. And slowly these gap days started becoming more frequent and bigger. But I cannot say that I gave up midway what I started-to write daily. Sometimes you just don’t feel like writing, sometimes you can’t think of what to write, sometimes you feel just lazy. But If I am using these gaps to improve upon something else then it cannot be termed as a failure. I created space to do something else and not being tied down to one thing. I used my option to my freedom to failure but it is again not a failure. I may have used that time in some productive things or just doing something mundane but it was my choice. We have to accept that our priorities can change over time and failure to do what I wanted is not a failure but can be just that I found something better to do or reprioritized.
Since childhood the fear of failure is drilled in children and then it takes ages for the child to get out of that fear. Failure should not be treated as an adversary and be allowed to overwhelm us. Failure helps us to identify the unrealistic expectations, mixed up priorities and motives and ultimately get over it. So please do not close the window of ****freedom to fail**** in someone’s life.
Life lessons of a crypto investor
Stock, crypto currency, forex and commodity are dynamic investments where the value of our portfolio varies each day. Not only the traders but even long term hodlers also have that nagging fear on the back of the mind about their portfolio value going down. These do not give the satisfying feeling of capital protection as the savings account and fixed deposits give. On the other side these savings account and fixed deposit also don not give the return which we want to generate. This state of constant flux is akin to what we face in life.
1) **No short cuts**. Once in a while you may stumble upon a crypto that will give you explosive returns, but it is more likely that you will lose the gains while looking for the next one. No one is lucky all the time. Same is with life. Some of our decisions in life may hit the bull’s eye but we are not lucky every time – If we try it every time then it becomes a gamble. The best approach is to be focusing on the long term goals of life and be methodical about it.
2) **Risk is a constant companion**. Investment is always fraught with risk which is unavoidable. Even our safest saving account can vanish is the bank goes bankrupt, what to say about crypto where volatility is a constant companion. Risk in investment can off course be mitigated by diversifying. Similarly risk in life cannot be eliminated completely. That risk can come from our own mistakes or mistakes of others where we become the victim. In life also we need to have a contingency plan to mitigate our risks, like having multiple source of income, life insurance, health insurance, estate planning.
3) **Boring is good**. Running after the next big crypto pump and reaping the profits is good but is not sustainable in the long run. Treating life as a casino game is a sure shot recipe for disaster. Running after the latest gadgets, fashion, car, food and luxury travel will look good for some time. But after sometime all these will start feeling stale and life will long for a simple clutter free life which may seem to be boring. A simple life will be more appealing and enjoyable.
4) **No free lunch**. Everything in life extracts a cost. The cost can be in the form of money or peace of mind or anxiety etc. If we do not invest then our money will not grow, but in fact lose value to inflation. If we invest then we can have losses also. Similarly in live we have to constantly take decisions and the outcome of decisions are not always in our hand. If we take a decision then we may enjoy its reward or by indecision we have miss out the reward. No one will come and solve our problems or take decisions for us, we have to do it ourselves and bear with the outcome. Indecision may be far costlier than mistakes.
5) **De-attach**. Investment is like having a baby. Once you have it, it is very difficult to let go. We tend to hang on to the good investments thinking that it will continue giving goo returns and thereby do not en-cash the rewards. We tend to hang on to the bad investments in expectation of a turn around, which seldom comes. In life it is the same case. It is easy to get attached to the things we buy and then we cannot de attach ourselves. We get attached to relations and when that relation turns sour we still want to cling on to it there by causing more pain. It is important to learn the art of moving on.
6) **Your well being is your responsibility**. Investment is a personal conscious decision where we may take advice from many but ultimately the onus is on us and no one else. It is very much applicable with crypto as there are so many options and opportunities. Some may chose to be a trader and some a hodler. It is all a personal choice. So in life all our decisions and indecisions are our choice and we have to take responsibility for the outcome, No one else is going to take reap the benefit or take the burden of the outcome of our decisions. That’s why life is a constant learning experience.
7) **Persistence and discipline**. These two things are more important than talent and intelligence. Without the topping of persistence and discipline, talent will surely not sustain for a long time. That’s why we see so many child prodigies fizzle out when they grow up. Investment in crypto especially requires these two qualities to survive considering the wild swings. That is why we call it diamond hands. Those who cannot digest the swings should not be in crypto. A successful and desirable life is also not possible without these two qualities. Life is also expert in throwing swings at us at regular intervals and only these two qualities can help us sail through turbulent times.
It is all a game of mind, whoever has the mind in control wins the game of crypto as well as life.
The puppies of Dogecoin
There is a company in India named Bombay Oxygen Investment Ltd. It was originally incorporated as Bombay Oxygen Corporation Ltd and was in the business of providing industrial use gases including Oxygen since 1960. In 2018 it changed its name to the current one (investment limited) and since Aug 2019 it stopped the earlier business and registered itself as NON BANKING FINANCIAL INSTITUTION. Due the recent Covid spike in India there was a crisis of Oxygen supply and due to high demand of Oxygen, the stock price of companies dealing with oxygen shot up. The price of this small cap stock which used to hang around 10000 INR suddenly shot up till 23000 INR. People who are completely unaware of what the company does, FOMOed in just by seeing the name of the company and not knowing what the company actually does.
This is the power of FOMO.
In crypto world we are seeing a super FOMO of crypto dogs.
The first one was the Dogecoin created in 6 Dec 2013 as a fun meme coin by two software engineers as a payment system but it quickly developed an online fan following community. In 2014 for a short time its trading volume even surpassed the combined trading volume of all coins. During the 2017-18 Bull Run its market capitalization almost reached 2 billion. During this Bull Run, particularly in 2021 we all know the amazing return it gave riding the waves of Elon Musk and others. This coin, which is potentially treated as a shit coin but, I guess some shit coins are born with luck and has survived so long.
Riding the wave of Dogecoin now we see copycats of it, not one or two, but I will write about 6 dog coins that are in FOMO now.
The most popular one is the **Shiba Inu** (Shib token), created by Ryoshi. It calls itself the dogecoin killer and a self proclaimed decentralised meme token. Though it does not have any project and utility at all but the present hype has given it a substantial price run up. It claims it will bring up projects like Shibaswap with three tokens SHIB, BONE and LEASH. Its popularity has been such that Binance also listed it in its exchange. At present it has a market cap of more than 4 billion dollars.
Next is **Husky** coin and it calls itself the little brother of Dogecoin and acknowledges itself as being inspired by Dogecoin and Elon Musk. It plans to come up with a DEX this year and has already built a bridge to Binance smart chain. Its 5% tokens are with the team, 45% is in Uniswap and the rest 50% has been ‘burned’ by Vitalik of Erhereum.
Next is **ShibaPup**. The website is highly dedicated to the one sided love for ELon Musk and says that it was created because Elon asked for it. It was launched on Binance smart chain and is available in Pancakeswap. Circulating supply is 10 million.
Next is **Kishu Inu**. It is a decentralised project which rewards it holders with 2 percent of the coins for every transaction on the network and has a maximum supply of 10 quadrillon. It also plans to launch an exchange called Kishuswap. It is presently available in Uniswap.
Next is **Doge token** (Doget). It was launched in stellar blockchain. It also claims that it can never be 51 percent attacked and therefore is invincible. It has a total supply of 9,996,778,208 tokens.
Next is **Dogeswap** (Doges). It has a working DEX at present and plans to have other projects like asset management, NFT, launch pads etc. It is also planning a governance token. It has a circulating supply of 20000 tokens and is listed on Uniswap.
Call it FOMO and greed but people have actually jumped in to buying these tokens with a hope of making lots of money quickly. The immense run up of Dogecoin has made developers copycat it and when people are ready on the sidelines with cash then who would not like to create projects to cash in and even scam.
Web 1, 2 and 3
Those born early enough and using internet since last 25 years have seen the progress of our interaction with the internet and the changes through time. Slowly it has covered every aspect of our lives and the internet has become an addiction as well as a necessity. The present stage of internet which we experience now is the third level of internet that is the web 3. As I said before some of you have experienced web 1 and web 2 also, but a big chunk of younger generation has not experienced the earlier levels and would be thinking that it was like this since the beginning.
So today I will tell about the three levels- web 1, web 2 and web 3 in brief.
**Web 1**- This was the time of mid nineties before Mr Google was born. This was the time before the video streaming and social media. Alta Vista and Netscape used to dominate the internet space. It was the time when internet was meant to be read only. Information could only be searched and read mainly.
**Web 2**- This is when we were able to read and write. So we were not just mere observers but able to contribute our contents on websites. It came around 2003 and had a major impact on internet marketing and business. Now we could review products on websites, comment on Instagram posts. This had a critical effect on our online purchase as we could get a feedback on the product we wished to buy.
**Web 3** – This is when internet became real intelligent. You can gauge this when you interact with the internet. It will show you things based on your interest which is reflected in what you search and use internet mostly for. Now internet could be used with algorithm to understand you better. Now it can track your movement, your choices, your friends, your likes and dislikes, where you like to eat, what you like to eat outside and so many things.
The web 3 has 4 main properties-
**Semantic web**- It means that the web could process data as per the given instructions. Now data analytics is done by the intelligent machines giving a seamless interaction between the man and the machine. What is the difference between ‘I love BCH’ and ‘1< BCH’? In this case the syntax may be different but the semantics is the same for the two sentences. The semantics of these two sentences convey the emotion of the data. Here both these sentences express the same emotion and meaning. Semantics with artificial intelligence has immense potential in utilization of the data that is generated on the internet.
**Artificial intelligence**- In addition to blockchain, artificial intelligence is the two major pillars of internet today. Ai is also sometimes called machine intelligence or machine learning and has far more potential in the amount of data it can analyse than humans. It has the ability to filter huge amount of data and present it in the form we want. An example is the movie review site Rotten tomatoes, it takes feedback from people on a movie and present to us in various categories of liking, which makes it easier for us to decide. Ai can even judge when many people come together to review a movie with the intent to deliberately like or dislike it. It can filter out such cases and give a reliable feedback.
**3D graphics**- Web 3 jumped from 2D to 3D opening up the space for online gaming, architecture design and medical science to name a few. Now a day’s gaming industry is worth billions of dollars and it is all because of realistic 3D graphics. Previously our email address used to be our online identity but in future a time will come were we will create our 3D identity.
**Omnipresent**- With web 3 interaction we are present everywhere online. When I post this article on the internet it becomes available everywhere and anyone can also interact with me from anywhere. In other words I am accessible everywhere that is ubiquitous. Similarly sitting in my home I can make a video chat with anyone in the world without any national boundaries.
Advantages of Web3-
- increased interaction and linking
- efficient searching and browsing experience
- effective communication with the AI
Disadvantages-
- Older devices may have problem interacting with Web3 unless upgraded
- It may be difficult to understand and interact for new comers.
In our crypto world Metamask is the most popular web 3 wallet and it gives a smooth experience in interaction with various dapps. The web3 foundation has been created by Dr Gavin Wood. We all know he was one of the co-founder of Ethereum and later on Polkadot. The projects of web 3 foundation include Polkadot, Kusama Canary network, cross chain message passing and web3 MOOC and also has an annual web3 summit. It also funded 200+projects.
So we see that internet has come a long way and the full potential of web 3 is being explored by us. Surely future generations will see further improvements and innovations leading to a seamless man machine internet synchronization.
The effect of fees, interest rate and time on profit in DEFI
(See in desktop please)
Defi is the current buzz word in crypto. The total value locked under defi has increased exponentially in a year and is now in billions. Almost every week we are seeing new defi projects launching. Defi is like the Disney world of crypto. The lure and opportunity of making a handsome profit is too good to resist. So today I am going to dig deeper and see how fees, APR/APY and time affects your profitability.
First it is important to understand the cost aspect of investing in defi as this will eat away some of your profit. I will compare some of the Binance smart chain projects and the Ethereum projects as approximate fees charged by them. The rates of ethereum fluctuate quite wildly but this will at least give you a comparison between the two chains.
Action BSC project fee fee Ether project
Move token BSC 0.15 15 Ethereum
Approve Token for Trade PancakeSwap 0.20 10.00 Uniswap
Swap Tokens PancakeSwap 0.40 75.00 Uniswap
Add Liquidity Pool Deposit PancakeSwap 0.60 60.00 Uniswap
Remove Liquidity Pool Deposit PancakeSwap 0.80 65.00 Uniswap
Approve Token for Lending Venus 0.15 15.00 Compound
Deposit Asset Venus 0.60 25.00 Compound
Enable Collateral Venus 0.20 24.00 Compound
Borrow Venus 1.65 80.00 Compound
Repay Borrow Venus 0.5 45.00 Compound
Harvest Reward Venus 11.00 130.00 Compound
Stable swap Approve Token Deposit- Belt 0.20 15.00 Curve
Stable swap Add Deposit Belt 8.00 215.00 Curve
Stable swap Harvest Reward Belt 0.3 75.00 Curve
Deposit into Yield Farm Autofarm 3.00 185.00 Yearn Fin
We know that the cost of entering and exiting an ethereum based defi can reach up to 200 dollars easily in volatile times. So suppose you need to pay a fee of 200 dollars for entering a project and withdraw back to your wallet, then you should have sufficient principal to make profit even after deducting the fees or else it will be a loss making investment. On BSC this cost may come to between 3-8 dollars. Also remember if you are compounding your profit or harvesting your profit that will also incur you transaction fees.
The above comparison brings out two facts. First you can recoup your expenses at a lower APR/APY in BSC than in Ethereum projects. Secondly you can recoup your expenses in a shorter time frame in BSC.
Next we will compare the APR that will be required to recoup the 200 dollar fees in an ethereum based project with different principal amounts.
Principal APR payoff in 1 week in 1 month in 3 months in 1 year
1,000 964% 222% 75% 18%
5,000 205% 48% 16% 4%
10,000 103.5% 24% 8.0% 2%
100,000 10.5% 2.45% 0.80% 0.20%
1,000,000 1.05% 0.25% 0.08% 0.02%
As per the above table you will need to earn 18 percent APR for 1 year with a principal of 1000 dollars to recoup your transaction fee of 200 dollars and not making a loss. With 10000 dollars you will need 2% APR for 1 year for the same thing. If you want to recoup the 200 dollars expense in 3 months then you will need to get an APR of 8 percent for a 10000 dollar investment. We know that APR in ethereum based defi is generally low, so anyone participating in it with less than 10000 dollars will have to be invested for a long time. Also APR keeps varying with time. The ideal investment range would be a 100000 dollar as principal to make the most out of it.
Now let us see the same with a 5 dollar fee in BSC based project.
Principal APR payoff in 1 week in 1 month in 3 months in 1 year
1,000 25% 6% 2% 0.6%
5,000 5.3% 1.2% 0.5% 0.12%
10,000 2.4% 0.65% 0.2% 0.06%
100,000 0.27% 0.06% 0.023% 0.005%
1,000,000 0.03% 0.014% 0.003% 0.0005%
So here we see that to recoup the 5 dollar fee in 3 months we will need 2 percent APR with a 1000 dollar investment. It is clear now that the timeframe as well as the APR is drastically reduced to recoup our expenses. Whereas to recoup a 200 dollar fees I will require 5000 dollar investment for 3 months at 16 percent APR in ethereum chain, in Binance smart chain to recoup a 5 dollar fee with 5000 dollar investment I will need a 0.5 percent APR for 3 months.
There is no doubt that ethereum is a reputed network and the best projects are on it. But as fees are high and not all investors are able to cough up big amount of money so projects on BSC are flourishing at the moment. If Ethereum network succeeds in reducing the fees drastically which it is working on hard then surely money will again flow into ethereum chain from the other chains.
One lacunae of BSC is that it accepts any type of projects even those which seem to be dubious in nature, therefore one has to be careful in which projects one is investing. Every market cycle brings in new investors and most are drawn to crypto fuelled by greed, these are the people who generally get scammed and fooled by high yield projects and lose money. Even with high fees Ethereum network is still the boss in the defi cryptoverse and is likely to continue.
This was just to give you a comparison so that it helps you in making your investment decision and profitability keeping in mind the expenses you are likely to incur and the time factor.
The unsung heroes of science
The progress of science has been phenomenal in the last 100 years and we are enjoying the fruits of those scientific development. But it is a matter to ponder that we often overlook an important point and that is the use of animals in scientific research. The first thing that comes to our mind is the use of animals in the research and development of medicine. But first let us look at why there is a requirement of animals for this purpose.
The primary use of animals in medical research is to understand the health problems animals and humans have, in many cases the health problems are quite identical. On the basis of this it is important to assure ourselves that the new medical treatment is safe for humans. For this, testing them on living organisms is required to understand how it reacts to a new medicine or treatment.
Animals are favored because there are many similarities with the human genes. Another factor is that the animals have shorter life cycle so it becomes possible to study the effect in the whole life cycle of an animal and even generations. It is also easy to keep animals in a controlled environment of diet, light, routine etc which is difficult with humans. And the most important being that, humans being the dominant species have the ability to use animals without putting themselves in risk. Scientists may create new drugs without the use of animals but to understand its effect it has to be researched on animals. Only after this if the results seem promising then trials on human volunteers are done.
A few examples of this are the herceptin, which is used to treat breast cancer. 50 years ago the survival rate of breast cancer patients was 50 percent but now with the use of this medicine it is 80 percent. It was tested on mice, rats, monkeys before human trial. In fact it is based on antibody created in mice. Treatment of leukemia is also partially attributed to animal research. Similarly the Ebola vaccine was tested on primates first.
Now a day’s government have made strict guidelines on the use of animals in scientific research. But we are not in a stage till now to completely stop animal trials. As any promising research has to be tested on the whole body system so the requirement of animals will be there. We don’t have the ability to create artificial animals or a computer code to do away with the requirement of live animals. Again new treatments have to be tested to find out the effective dose and whether it is to be used orally or injected. Only when its effect, side effect and efficacy have been studied in animals will it be tested on humans. But in this process thousands of animals have been sacrificed in the name of science.
Another field where animals took precedence before humans is the field of space exploration. Except for the few successful ones like the Laika dog or the Ham the chimpanzee or the Albert II and Albert VI monkeys, we are hardly aware of the use of animals in space exploration. It is mostly because these are kept under wraps as most of them end in failure in space or the species dying shortly after landing back to earth.
The first species that were sent to space was the common fruit flies send on a American V2 rocket in 1947. A monkey was sent 2 years later as it was important to study the effect of gravity or lack of it on vertebrate animal. In fact 6 monkeys were sent in between 1948 to 1951 named sequentially Albert I to Albert VI. Out of these 6 monkeys, Albert II was the first to make it to space (though he died there) and Albert VI successfully returned to earth but died shortly after. Most of these animals either died during takeoff as the rocket malfunctioned or died in space.
In july 1951 USSR sent two dogs to space at a 101 km orbit, out of these 1 dog lived 7 days after retuning and the second one lived 10 more years. Laika a stray dog was sent by the Russians to orbit the earth for the first time. But it died in the 7th orbit but the space craft continued for 200 orbits before burning up in space. People were told as if it was still alive. Numerous animals were sent by America and Russia but most of them ended in disaster and did not make any news because such information was kept secret from the public.
In 1961 man took the first risk by sending Yuri Gagarin to space. But even after these, animals were continuously used in space exploration and research. A variety of animals like tortoise, jellyfish, cat, frog, spider, amoeba etc were sent to space. In fact turtles were among the first ones to go around the moon.
These animals were the first astronauts to explore the space and open up the possibility of human space exploration but they have been relegated to obscurity by the brilliance of human endeavor.
Animals being at a lower position in the evolutionary chart and being similar to humans has to pay the price. In most cases these animals suffered a painful and tragic death in the name of science. Man’s justification is that it is acceptable to exploit and torture animals as it makes our lives better. Though the 5 sensory perceptions may be the same but the inability to express it fully as we do has given us the power to be the lord of their destiny.
Understanding gas, gas price and gas limit
Eth is the most dynamic crypto ecosystem and all of us have transacted in this at some point of time. It is the god mother of numerous Dapps and has millions of dollars worth of transactions daily. It is important that transactions on this network are verified otherwise there will be total chaos and lack of faith in the eco system, leading to its collapse. We routinely use the term gas but we do not have a reasonable understanding of what it is. But everyone who is somewhat serious about crypto should have an outline idea about what gas is.
To verify these transactions we have the miners with immense computational power who do this work. This is where ‘Gas’ comes into play. Gas is the unit of work here. Let me explain it. Suppose a transaction is meant to add two numbers then it means 3 units of work. If the transaction involves multiplying two numbers then it amounts to 5 units of work. These guidelines are mentioned in the yellow paper. These units of work are called ‘gas’. So from this we know how many transactions are required in each case and the amount of gas it will require. But we still don’t know how much ETH has to be paid for that transaction. How to convert gas into ETH terms? Here gas price is required in ETH terms.
Before going further, let’s break down ETH into smaller denominations just as BTC is subdivided into satoshi.
1 ETH = 1000 Finny = 1 million Szabo = 1 billion Gwei = 1 quintillion Wei (smallest unit of ETH).
These names Finny, Gzabo, Shannon, Lovelace, Babbage, are not names thought of out of thin air but these are the names of persons who contributed a lot in the development of crypto currency. You can see the data below. For gas the term we use out of these is Gwei which is 1 billionth of 1 ETH.
So, 1 Gwei of gas is actually 0.000000001 ETH.
Gas price is how much you are actually willing (or you are actually required to pay) for per unit of work. In metamask you will see the option of gas price mentioned and it can be edited as per the speed at which you want your transaction to complete. The ethgasstation gives the current estimate of gas that is prevailing, and you can compare form this website to get an idea.
I will give an example here. Suppose you want to buy a box of candy and you are willing to pay 5 cent per candy. Your budget to buy the candy box is 5 dollars. Another person comes and he is willing to pay 7 cents per candy and his budget is 8 dollars. Here the per unit price you are willing to pay is the gas price. When someone is willing to pay 7 cents for the candy, so he will get it before you. Likewise if someone is willing to pay 7 gwei (0.000000007 ETH) for a transaction for which you are willing to pay 5 gwei (0.000000005 ETH) so obviously the miner will process the transaction of 7 gwei first. For this reason you will find when markets are volatile the gas price increases as some people are willing to pay more so that their transaction is processed first or earlier. Miners will automatically make a list of transaction in descending order so the higher gas price orders are processed first.
Now comes the ‘gas limit’ which we seldom change while processing a transaction. As per the above example you are willing to pay a maximum of 5 dollars but the other person is willing to pay a total of 8 dollars. This total amount of gas you are willing to pay is the gas limit for that transaction. An example will make it clear.
Suppose you are willing to pay gas fees of 5 gwei and set a gas limit of 21000(which is the standard for transacting ETH). 5 gwei is 0.000000005 ETH multiplied by 21000 = 0.000105 ETH. Just as you were willing to spend 5 dollars to pay the candy box so you are willing to pay a maximum of 0.000105 ETH for the transaction. So gas price (gwei) multiplied by gas limit is the max you will pay. If while processing your transaction, the number of units of work is too many and your total gas falls short then your transaction will fail.
Suppose your transaction has 100000 units of computation and for each unit you are paying 5 gwei per unit then it will require 100000 x 5= 500000 gwei(500000 x 0.000000001= 0.0005 ETH), but as you have set the limit of 21000 (0.000105 ETH ) therefore your transaction will fail. You will run out of gas before the full computation is complete. You will need to increase gwei from 5 to a higher rate so that your transaction is complete. As a common person we don’t know how much total gas will be required so if we do not set a gas limit then the transaction may run into several hundred dollars to execute. To protect ourselves from this we set the gas limit. Below is a picture of a failed transaction as it went out of gas.
If less gas is required than what you have stipulated then the extra gas is returned to you. If transaction fails due to less gas then the fees are not refunded. Before making in Eth or ERC 20 transaction it is better to visit ethgasstation as see the prevailing rates. Generally ERC 2O transaction will have higher gas fees than ETH transactions. Also a simple sending of coin from one wallet to another will cost less. Sending or interacting with smart contracts and Dapps will cost more. Swapping or exchanging will also cost more. Its all based on the number of computations required to execute the transactions. It is generally said that weekend mornings are the best time to transact ETH or ERC20 tokens.
Surviving crypto mania
We are now in the epicenter of a crypto mania. That minority of the population who have joined this crypto fervor are enjoying the Bull Run. We are in the middle point of it if we compare it with bitcoin price expectation. The previous market top was 20000 USD and people expect 100000+ USD bitcoin this time. Till now we reached about 65000 USD ATH. So we have come 45000 USD till now and another 35000 USD pump required to meet people’s expectation. Similarly other coins have their own journey, expectation and targets.
The previous market cycle was driven by price and in this market cycle defi is playing a major role. In the previous cycle we did not have so many different block chains working together but this time apart from bitcoin and ether, we have Solana, polygon, terra, Binance smart chain, Polkadot block chains to name a few. And there are bridges to jump from one block chain to another. There is no doubt the market has matured from the previous bull run and the variety of investment opportunities had increased many fold. Staking and liquidity providing is a major investment opportunity this time not to mention the various lending platforms.
Being in the middle of bull run is like living a life of euphoria. Many have doubled their investments many times over and expecting much more. Even when I joined this platform in July 2020, BCH was around 200 USD and now it has comfortably crossed 1000 dollars. I bought a few Matic bought for 275 dollars in Nov 2020 and it is worth more than 12000 dollar as I write, just to give an example how much appreciation can some crypto make in bull market.
Now is the time when you lose your control and the market controls you through greed. The expectation hype is so much that people postpone booking profits periodically. We all understand that this bull market will end at some point of time, but we get so attached to the price of the coins that we forget that the whole purpose of most of the people is to make money out of it. When the market will start to correct we don’t know and when some knowledgeable person will tell that now we are reaching the market top and we should plan our exit strategy, we will not heed those words because of the greed.
It is always better to start booking profits both when the market is going up as well as when the market is going down. As we DCA in, we should also plan DCA out. It is foolish to expect that you will catch the top to exit your positions. Now most of us have two types of holdings. One is the core holding of the coins which we consider to consist of the coins which we believe in the most, like Bitcoin, Ether, Chainlink, BCH, etc and would not let go off completely. Next are the coins which we invested to make the most out of this bull run. The problem is not with the core coins but with the second category. We tend to get attached with these coins so much as they generally give better returns that the core coins.
So be very clear with your strategy and be very brutal with your mind, do not get attached with all the coins which you hold and dump the ones which you originally planned, as per your strategy. These are the coins which will fall more than 90% in bear market wiping out your gains, if you are not disciplined. Even with your core coins you must be doing DCA at various prices. Plan your partial exit strategy in these as well. Suppose you are holding 1 Ether from previous market cycle and in this cycle you have bought 3 more at various price points using dollar cost averaging. You need not hold all these 4 coins till the next market cycle. You can keep a 2.5 Ether and plan your exit strategy for the rest as per your liking. I am sure you will get Ether at cheaper rate in bear market than some of your DCA price.
Some defi platforms like Binance smart chain gives insane returns for some obscure coins. People FOMO in to them but after getting insane gains they do not exit the position and thereby get stuck with those coins as liquidity dries up. So if you are doing this then don’t wait till the pool to end and then withdraw but do it in the middle so that you can actually withdraw and exchange those coins to some good ones, or else there are high chances you will get stuck.
A common strategy is to convert earnings to stable coins and then using them in some platform to earn some interest out of it. When you are doing it then do not put all your stable coin earnings in one platform but spread it across 2 or 3 platforms. We have seen even the most popular ones been hacked, so spread your risk to minimize it.
Also with so many options available now do not stick to one block chain and platform. You can spread your investments across Ether, BSC, Solana, Anchor chains. This will also help in reducing the risk.
The primary aim of using crypto should to create a passive income source for middle class people like us so that it augments our primary source. If you want to develop a passive income of say 500 USD per month then you have to plan well. Suppose you are earning interest from 3 platforms, in some you will be earning more and in some less. Use the passive income from one source to increase the capital of another source, this way you will be able to create an equal source of income from three sources. Example- Suppose you are earning in Nexo, BSC and anchor protocol and the most earning you are getting from BSC. In that case periodically transfer the earning from BSC to Nexo and anchor protocol so that you can create an equitable amount of passive income from the three sources. The benefit of this is that if one collapses then you will have 2 more good sources. This way you are ensuring that your risk is equally spread out and secondly you are not too much dependent on one source. Your primary aim should be not to touch the core investment but to use the interest or reward earned out of it.
In the midst of this bull run it is important that we keep ourselves grounded and stick to a strategy. Exiting is more difficult than entering the market- always keep that in mind. These are some of my learning’s from the crypto market which I wanted to share with you all so that you make the most of it rather than lose the most of it. My point is whatever plan you follow, just follow it, do not deviate from it feeling greedy. If you don't have a plan then make one that suits you.
The war over Gods
I am starting this article but I don’t know how and where it will finish. So please bear with me. As you have made out today’s topic is of eternal conflict since these two concepts evolved. The common ground in all religion is that God is the creator and also possesses the qualities of all knowing, all merciful, all powerful, all wise, beyond space and time and unaffected by anything what so ever. Anything else which is superlative and best of the best can be added to his description.
The problem arises when everyone considers that what their god has said is right and is the best thing. Before the advent of the prominent monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam came Hinduism which is blamed to be a polytheistic religion. If someone digs deeper then even Hinduism is a monotheistic religion but here the concept of god is different from that of Christianity and Islam. So when there is a conceptual difference there is bound to be conflict. But I will keep aside Hinduism for the time being.
The first question that arises is that if god is one for all then why the two most prominent monotheistic religions are different from each other? When the first major monotheistic religion came then there should not have been a requirement of a second one. But still the second one came is flourishing quite well. It can be said that the first one and the second one are different from each other, but then in that case we will have two gods. If the teaching of both the religions is not a photocopy of each other then also it can be said that because the source is not one therefore the teachings are different. In this case also then we are accepting that there are two gods.
Here arises the problem, both accepting in one god but the teachings differ in both- how can that be? When this comes to the followers then it becomes a competition for supremacy – what my god said is right and what others have said is not the right path. Then all sort of justifications start pouring in to prove it. Before the advent of the two prominent monotheistic religions there were no wars based on religion, but after that there have been numerous wars in the name of religion and to spread their respective religions. Monotheistic religions gave rise to religious intolerance.
In case of religions which came before Christianity and Islam, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism which gave god status to more than one, there was no problems in accepting and giving space to more than one god. This open mindedness gave an easygoing approach to religion with all existing happily side by side. Monotheism brought rigidity with a conviction that the rituals and practices which I follow are the only correct way to approach and worship god. This is the reason why the first religious battles were fought to uphold these separate convictions of monotheistic religion. The war involving monotheistic and polytheistic religions started for a different reason. Here the battle was to spread the supremacy of monotheistic over polytheistic religion. The polytheistic religions first openly accepted the presence of another religion without conflict but when the true nature of the purpose came out, only then did the polytheistic religions started to resist. It may not sound politically correct but one of the primary focuses of Christianity and Islam has been to spread the religion among others. The Christians did this mostly through their economic conquest of the world in earlier centuries and is presently done through missionaries. The Muslims did this through conquest by expanding their territory and quite a bit of forced conversions. Before this the pre Christ religions seldom had any conflict on these grounds and existed peacefully without resorting to any type of force or coercion.
One of the drawbacks which I perceive of the monotheistic religion is that they tend to take god beyond the all knowing, all merciful, all powerful, and all wise to the alpha and omega of the universe, the only all supreme. This leads to a doctrinal conflict with other religions as one is not ready to accept anything else. From where does this belief comes that there can be only one road which leads to god. What is the difficulty in accepting that the goal can be one but the roads can be many? Whereas the monotheistic religions cannot go beyond their single road a polytheistic religion allows different highways to reach god. When a person is given the leeway to approach god in his own way then he is more open to accept other ways also, but if the mind is forced into believing that there can be only one way then that mind will never accept any other way.
One explanation can be that human mind may believe in a formless god but cannot conceive a formless one due to the limitation of the mind. When the mind is restricted to a particular line of thinking given in a book and the person is not capable of treading that path due to the limitation of his mind, then it is but natural that he will lose direction. But when there are multiple options available to him and he has the freedom to choose the way which suits his nature then it is more likely that he will not lose direction. An example can be that when we fire a rifle our vision passes through two sights on the rifle, the fore sight which is at the tip of the barrel and the rear sight which sits just in front of the eyes and the target. We need to use both the sights to take a perfect aim at the target or else we will miss the target. Here the rear sight is the face which we conceive as god, the foresight gives us the direction towards god and the target is the god. Without the rear sight we will not get the right direction to aim.
Another great difference which I have noticed is that the monotheistic religions follow a formless view of god but actually create a god which is more akin to as if it has a form, which behaves as if it is a living entity. In Islam particularly no picture can be made of the Prophet, but while praying why then it is required to face the Mecca. Instead of giving a form, the direction is the form. If god is present everywhere then a follower should be able to pray facing any direction. A polytheistic religion has given many faces to god in many forms but the underlying concept is that the prayer is addressed to the formless one in his own personal way. The faces are just a means to direct there prayer to the formless. For this reason there is no restriction in the number of ways god can be addressed through as many faces he wishes.
One basic difference between monotheistic religion and polytheistic religion is that monotheistic religion believes god is sitting on a pedestal in heaven but a polytheistic religion like Hinduism Buddhism and Jainism though believing in heaven and hell searches for god in his soul and not for someone sitting on a pedestal in heaven. In Hinduism it is called 'sat- chit-ananda' which means 'truth- consciousness-bliss'. It is synonymous to the three qualities of the supreme being which can be experienced by a seeker by achieving this state. This heavenly experience is experienced in the soul. It has nothing to do with polytheism, the various gods worshipped in various forms are just stepping stones to the right direction and destination.
Ultimately as I believe both the ways of worship has their strength and weaknesses. But the biggest weakness lies in us, our nature does not allow accept our mistakes and weaknesses and therefore we try to justify our point first through discussion and then through force. If the all knowing and the all wise understood beforehand about this weakness of its so called greatest creation then I am sure he would have not tried to force himself upon us this way. But now gods mistake cannot be undone by even him.
**Disclaimer**: The article is in no way intended to hurt the religious sentiment of anyone. If I have hurt your religious sentiment then I apologize for it. Please read it with an open mind only.
Advantages and disadvantages of religion in our life
Religion occupies a lot of space in our personal life as well as the society even extending up to country and global level. I may be an atheist personally but I cannot keep myself untouched to the religions around me and it does affect me whether I like it or not. Like all belief systems religion also has its advantages and disadvantages both at personal level and as a mass belief. It has helped people in many ways as well as being destructive as hell. I will not go deep into any particular religion but will jot down the 8 pros and cons of religion.
1) **It helps us in overcoming our insecurities**. This is the most common use of religion as I have noticed in a personal level. Whenever something bad is happening in our lives we fall back on some supreme power with our insecurities and a plea for help. It gives a satisfaction first as a satisfaction of unburdening the heart of its weight of anxiety and a hope that some supreme power will listen and do something about it. This helps in calming ourselves and also provides a mental strength.
2) **It can help in difficult times**. As mentioned above it can give us a level of satisfaction when we urgently need it. People of same religion can develop a support mechanism in society which can be of great help in difficult situations. It can come in the form of financial and moral support and even in the form of medical help or jobs for the jobless. Connections within the same religion have immense support system in times of need.
3) **It increases the confidence level**. A combination of above two points surely will increase the confidence level of a person just when it is required. He will feel less lonely and depressed.
4) **Overcome fear of death**. All religions have some sort of afterlife and heaven and hell concept. All of us are hopeful of heaven irrespective of the deeds we have done. Coupled with it if a religious person believes that after death he is going to meet god then it surely helps in overcoming fear of death to some extent.
5) **It helps in finding meaning of life**. We all have a hectic lifestyle from the morning to the evening which is repetitive and mostly boring. So sometimes we get this feeling of being lost. In those times the religious teachings may open up a new flow of thoughts about the true meaning of life beyond what someone is living.
6) **It can act as a motivation factor**. As mentioned above the current lifestyle may at some point of time make us feel mechanical but religion can act as a motivation to something good and diversify our interest into social work or even motivate us to get up in the morning for a prayer routine.
7) **It may help socialize**. People are generally comfortable in socializing where there is some common ground, in this case it can be religion. And it is true that people of same religion actually feel comfortable socializing within their ecosystem.
8) **It helps in promoting a value system**. All religions have a coded value system in the form of commandments which help in creating a set of values by which people can live their lives.
Of course there is another side of the coin which cannot be neglected.
1) **Religion regulates our freedom**. We are born as free without any mental bondage. But when we make ourselves part of a religion then we are actually digging a ditch around us. A ditch of values and beliefs which is actually curtailing our freedom of thought and action.
2) **Flawed arguments.** All religions have given some arguments to justify its commandments and values. Mostly these arguments have a historical time print and may not be applicable in a different time period. Excessive belief may bind us to those arguments without giving the option to use our thinking faculty to bisect it logically.
3) **It can be used by fundamentalist**. There are enough examples these days where flawed belief system has been used by fundamentalists to act and also justify their actions. Even in history we have seen conflicts between Christians and Muslims in the name of religion. Not only physical conflicts but it can take the shape of forced or coerced religious conversions to spread the dominance.
4) **It often contradicts with science**. Religions have described many astrological events though its own lenses which contradicts with the latest scientific discovery. It can range from the creation of universe to flat earth theory to even curing diseases.
5) **Man made claims**. It is especially applicable for monotheistic religions where someone born in flesh and bone has claimed a direct connection with God. It is a matter of debate whether it is at all possible to develop such a connection or was it a pure hallucination. If Jesus can turn water to wine and Mohammad say wine is a ‘haram’ then how can the one god give contradictory statements.
6) **The quality of life may suffer**. If we are too much into a particular religion and totally disregard any other religion then we are binding ourselves out of an open and free mind. We tend to disregard whatever be the other viewpoint. We live in a closed mindset which is not at all conducive to the multi religious, cultural and societal lifestyle we are presently living in.
7) **It takes away the responsibility of men’s actions.** It becomes very easy to justify our acts in the name of religion without actually taking responsibility for our actions. It is quite easy to turn from a liberal religious follower to a fundamentalist religious person and the transformation may happen so subtly that we may not realize ourselves that our mindset has changes completely. We have seen so many people from across the world living in distinctively different geographical and cultural background join ISIS in the name of religion.
8) **A threat to global peace**. Of all the various threats, the threat of a religious conflict ranks very high in the list of threats to global peace. The divide runs so deep in the name of religion that we seldom find a common ground to understand each other.
The basic understanding that religion is for our betterment (if any) and we are not slaves to religion seems to be beyond the present level of our understanding. We the people are basically divisive in nature, we divide ourselves on the basis of place we live, the color of skin, the facial feature, the economic condition and so on, and religion just adds another potentially disrupting dimension to it. Now religion is more a game of domination than a way of harmony.
Questioning good and evil
In the theosophical and philosophical space evil is a topic of discussion. Why there is evil, what is the purpose of evil and so on? Also for all those believers in God, evil is a dilemma as to why God makes us deal with evil. Why is there a concept of evil and goodness? If evil leads to suffering then what is the purpose of that suffering?
Evil is broadly of two types the personal evil and the natural evil. Personal evil is what we humans do in the form of as serious crimes as murder, genocide, rape etc to simple things as deliberately hurting someone’s feelings or even stomping on someone’s feet. Natural evil is something like the storm or the volcano or the earthquake which wrecks havoc on the affected people or creatures.
One of the most common explanations of evil is that if there was no evil then how we would know what is good and the importance of goodness. It is similar to the corollary that if we don’t taste something bitter then how will we understand the taste of sweetness or if we don’t understand the pain of touching a fire then how will we know that it is dangerous to touch a fire. But here a question also arises, how can anything that makes us understand the good can be evil? Are we supposed to only live with goodness?
Is it less evil to kill an ant than kill a man and is it 'more good' to feed a hungry man than feed a hungry cow? Can good and evil be categorized into good better best or worse and worst.
As per Christianity Adam and Eve committed an act of disobedience of God and committed the original sin. God is said to be all powerful, all knowing and all loving, if these three characteristic are no there then how can it be a God. If God was all powerful then it could have stopped them from eating fruit from the forbidden tree, if God was all knowing then he knew that these two will ultimately eat from the forbidden tree even if I tell them not to, if God was all loving then why did he punish them for eating from the forbidden tree by giving them a life of suffering. Something doesn’t seem to add up.
Is free will the missing link? If free will is the missing link then we have been given the permission to do anything we like that includes what is called evil. But why would God who loves us so much give us the free hand to do evil also. What will God achieve by giving us this free will to us when he knows that we will ‘misuse’ the free will? If God wanted that by granting free will I will give them the option to live there life in their own way. And thereafter I will dangle the carrot of heaven in front of them by saying that if you avoid the wrong path you will meet me in heaven, if you take the wrong path then you will be sent to hell. So basically he is giving the freedom of choice to us with a caveat about the outcome of our choices. Sounds like manipulation, do whatever you want but face the consequence.
Now for an atheist how this concept of what did is good and what is evil developed in the first place. We tend to always connect good and evil with God, but what about the concept of good and evil before the time we realized that god decides what is good and what is bad. Did those people feel bad when they killed another person or felt good when they saved another person? If our development of brain is a sequential event from animal life form to human life form then is there a concept of good and evil in animals also. If not then is it only creations of the mind which has reached a certain level of development or does it have anything to do with consciousness.
What about the natural evils I mentioned in the first paragraph, is it God doing those evils by using its freewill? What is God achieving by it? We tend to think those as gods warnings. So is it god’s strategy that I give you freewill and then I use my freewill by sending those natural calamities to warn you not to use your freewill or use that freewill carefully. So does god want to give us some sort of self regulated freedom?
Did all the ‘men of God’ claiming to having direct link with him use this loophole to regulate our freedom by creating some do’s and don’ts and hanging the carrot of heaven and hell. They have been immensely successful in it. Is there even a heaven or hell or was it just a ploy to manipulate the people to submission to 'Gods will'.
The concept of good and evil is so ingrained in our mind, may be through evolution and so deeply by our societal value system and influenced by religion that to question the basics in itself seems like a crime. But sometimes things which are so obvious to us should be questioned beyond our beliefs – who decides what is good and evil, what is good and evil, and what we are actually believing blindly is correct or not, what if there is no good and no evil and these are just terminologies we have invented for events we face in life, which are otherwise neutral and inert in nature.
There are too many questions in this article which might seem to be stupid when compared to our deep rooted beliefs, but it came to my mind so I shared my thoughts.
The journey of internet speed
25 years ago internet was the future for the common man, now internet speed is the future for us. At present an expected 4.5 billion people use internet on daily basis which is about 60% of the world population. This requires a huge amount of data transfer at a reasonable speed of data transfer. But with the requirement of internet for practically all purpose of life now, we require a higher rate of data transfer. Now people are hooked to watching videos and gaming which is a huge data guzzler. As internet will not stop so the only way is to increase the data speed and that is what scientists are constantly working on.
Our initial experience of internet connection was through telephone lines coming to our homes and from that telephone connection a modem was set up which was connected to the computer. It was all wired connection and the speed was extremely slow as per modern standards. There was high latency and therefore the download speed was very slow and we had to see the buffering screen so often.
With the mobile technology came the Wi-Fi where radio signals were used to connect to the modem and then further connect to the computer through a Wi-Fi setting. Now we did not require any wires though and the speed increased.
After this came the optical fiber cables which increased the speed of the connection significantly, It was a combination of a wired connection and Wi-Fi, where the optical cable fiber comes to our home and then connects to a modem to convert it into a Wi-Fi signal which further connects to our computer. So these were the three basic steps of internet connectivity and speed seen by us.
Internet speed which used to be in kbps is now experienced in mbps. In 2019 the average speed in USA was 33 mbps, in Taiwan around 85 mbps and 16 mbps in Australia. Though we see a large variation in speed but mostly people were able to watch videos and movies and read online books with relative ease.
Fiber optics has been the revolution in matters of internet speed. In fiber optic cables light pulses are the information carriers. The unique feature of this is that it has a large bandwidth which helps in transferring several terabits of data per second. It can carry data at huge distances without loss of data and any electromagnetic interference. The fiber optic cable under the Atlantic Ocean connecting USA and Spain is called the MAREA transatlantic cable. It covers a distance of about 6600 kms and carries data at 160 terabits per second. This actually clears another misconception about internet; it is that it is not transmitted through air but through a network of optical fiber cable network across the world. Not only internet but it is also used to transfer telephone calls and even the cable TV.
In 2015 the Japanese researchers made a major breakthrough in internet speed and were able to transfer data at the rate of 2.5 petabits per second. To understand the potential of this speed is that a 8k video can be seen by 10 million people at the same time without any latency or buffering – all these was possible due to optical fiber and its improvement. Next the same group of scientists in collaboration with two other Japanese companies could achieve a speed of 10 petabits per second. But it doesn’t mean that we are going to get it by year end, these speeds are still in experimental stage.
Let’s dig a little deeper into this optical fiber thing. Inside the optical fiber cable is threads though which light pulses pass. A single mode fiber has one thread and a multi mode more than one one ray of light can pass simultaneously. Now this will not be enough to increase the speed vastly. For this we will need more fibers carrying more number of light pulses within them to increase the bandwidth. It looks simple in these few lines but this is what scientists are working on to be realistically feasible in mass scale usage.
These 10 petabits per second is the ultimate till now. Through once cable 114 light streams passed and each carrying 739 wavelengths creating 84246 wave forms. Imagine a highway having this many lanes to travel from one place to another. To reach such speeds of connectivity in our home we will have to wait for some more years.
On the other side of this is Elon Musk with his Star link project which plans to orbit 42000 satellites around the earth and provide internet to every corner of the earth. This way he will be able to tap into a trillion dollar internet communication booty. Though there is criticism to it as it will create a lot of space debris and also obstruct future space programs.
We have seen the stages of internet development in the form of 1G,2G,3G,4G and now 5G is coming. 1G came in the eighties and provided analog voice, 2G came in the nineties and delivered digital voice with CDMA technology, 3G came in the 2000's and gave us mobile data and 4G came in 2010's enabling mobile broadband services. 5G will enable a network that will virtually connect everything and everyone with more reliability and higher capacity.
There is about 28000 kms long fiber optic network around the world mostly running under sea with servers on land. These are veins through which the data is transferred around the world. Antarctica is the only continent not connected with this submarine cable network.
The development of internet and its penetration has been phenomenal in a relatively short period of time and has been the most life changing development for all of us. The future seems all the more interesting.
Love is an emotional chemical cocktail
Love is the most cherished emotion and feeling and is considered the most superior also. It comes in various types like love of mother and offspring, love of brothers and sisters, love of lovers and marriage, and the Mother Teresa kind of love- loving the humanity. Out of these the first two comes most naturally, the next is what we make an effort for and the last type is for the rare few blessed soul.
We often link love to the feeling of the heart because we think we feel it from the heart and the heart break also. No one says I am brain broken because we broke up. It is indeed a very strong emotion and we can do almost anything for it. There can be eight different types of love.
Philia - the affectionate love. It is love without romantic inclination as found between friends and family members.
Pragma- the enduring love. It is an unique love between couples who are putting equal amount of faith dedication and commitment into the relationship.
Storge- familiar love. It is the kind of deep rooted love found between parents and children and some friends having deeper emotional connection.
Eros- the romantic love. It is the passionate primal love which is intrinsic to all and is a desire for another person’s physical body.
Ludus- the playful love. It is the childlike flirtatious love found in between new lovers and newly married. It is a type of playful excited interaction with lot of fun, teasing and laughter.
Mania- the obsessive love. As the name suggests it is a love bordering on jealousy and possessiveness due to mistrust and imbalance in love towards each other.
Philautia- the self love. It is a healthy form of self love where you value your self worth and personal needs of physical mental and emotional needs.
Agape- the selfless love. It is the highest form of love where you decide to spread love to all irrespective of anything in expectation and kindness for all.
Our life is not limited to any one form of love but a bouquet of it. In different stages of life some types may be stronger than the other types, but it won’t be devoid of any one of them. Except the Agape all other types of love are limited to our close ones. But agape has the ability to be used as a destructive love also. Hitler’s love for the pure Aryan race led to the genocide of Jews, Americas hatred for communism sucked them into the Korean and the Vietnam War.
Though the heart is said to be the epicenter of love but it is actually the brain which controls over emotion of love. It is a play of chemical in our brain which creates the emotions related to love.
Love also has three phases and these chemicals play an important role in it. Lust is often considered derogatory term in love but none the less it is a part of the love chemistry between a man and a woman. It is controlled by testosterone in males and estrogen in woman and is common to all mammals. So whether we accept it or not but it is an important emotion which leads to creation of offspring’s. Then is the attraction and euphoria stage which is controlled by the dopamine, adrenaline and nor epinephrine and has the same effect of addiction to drugs and it is the reason why our palms get sweaty, the heart racy and cheeks seems flushed. Next is the attachment stage which is again the effect of combination of a above mentioned chemicals along with oxytocin which is also called the cuddle hormone. It creates a feeling of close bond and gives us thoughts of a long term relationship. So a lot goes on in the brain and nothing in the heart.
What triggers someone to fall for another in a romantic relation varies from individual to individual but some common things influence it like the appearance, the personality traits and the body type. We find people in romantic relations who have been born and brought up in completely different environment as between a Chinese and an American. Or we find a slim girl falling for a fat man or vice versa, or a introvert falling for an extrovert, and a white falling for a black. Even money may induce love. It is indeed not fully understood yet what makes one love another person. Also we know how loved developed in the first place among the early humans. Was it purely based on lust which created the feeling of love or was it ingrained in the evolution process?
But whatever love is, it has the ability to transform our lives in a better way with all the joy and happiness and it also has the antidote for all the problems we have created for us on this earth.
Planned Obsolescence
Inside the Livermore fire station no: 6 in US is a light bulb that is the longest continuously working bulb in history, it is working since 1901. This bulb does not have an on off switch but has been given a power back up in case of light out. The original light bulbs were meant to last indefinitely, at least a person’s lifetime. But that would not make a good business sense as after sometime no one will buy bulbs anymore.
In the 1920’s the average life of a bulb was about 2500 hours but after that the increase in life of bulbs stopped. Then in 1924 In Geneva, the major manufacturers of light bulbs had a meeting which is now called the Phoebus Cartel. The participants included Philips, General Electric, Tokyo Electric, OSRAM, AEI and other smaller players from all around the world. In this meeting it was decided to help each other to control the supply of light bulbs. These included standardization of product across companies and also reduce the life of a light bulb to 1000 hours that is a reduction of more than 50 percent. For example in 1923 OSRAM sold 63 million light bulbs but in 1924 it sold only 23 million light bulbs, so sales were declining. To enforce it each company had to send samples of light bulb which were tested and if any company had bulbs having life significantly more then that company was fined.
The effect of this meeting was that the average life of a bulb decreased to 1200 hours by 1934 and the sales increased. Also as the cost of components reduced but the cost of bulb was kept almost unchanged thereby reaping more profit margins. So the longest lasting bulb is working till now because it was made before the Cartel. Though this cartel was dismantled by the Second World War but the idea was used in other products and is a standard practice of many companies. It came to be called as planned obsolescence.
In 2003 Apple I pod batteries were non-replaceable and lasted about 18 months. This led to a law suit which was ultimately settled out of the court. Then in 2017 after a software update the older Apple I phones were working slower than the newer ones. Apple said they have done this to increase the life of the battery thereby increase the longevity of the phone- but the only issue here was that the batteries were again non-replaceable. This also led to law suits worth millions of dollars but that amount is insignificant compared to the sales they generate by limiting the life of the product.
Now even other smart phones have irreplaceable batteries. Even software updates can affect your printer and older printers may not function at all forcing you to buy a new one. Prevention of repair and controlling battery life in mobiles has now become a standard practice of this industry. Instead of running around to find a way around it is easier just to buy a new one. Even ink cartridges of some printers come with smart chips which won’t allow the cartridge to print if the ink is low thereby preventing you to use the whole amount of ink you purchased. With newer models Apple changes the edges from rounded one to rectangular one and vice versa.
Another popular example of planned obsolescence is the printing of updated edition of books at regular intervals, mostly yearly. This practice is rampant in text books. Though each new edition may have very minor changes in the content but it is presented as a major update from the previous edition.
Fashion industry also works in this principle. The fashion is changed quickly so that people (mostly female fashion) trying to keep themselves updated with the latest fashion trends tend to dump the old clothes in favor of newer ones. This change in fashion is followed by low cost clothing which won’t last long and are cheaper than the big brands so that people buy them again and again.
This reminds me of the movie ‘The man in the white suit’ made in 1951. This movie shows a scientist who creates a perfect fiber for clothes which would not stain or wear out or break or lose color. At first everyone is excited but later everyone is worried that it will make companies bankrupt and the workers are worried that they will be out of work after some time (just like light bulbs). The laundry woman says that as the fiber never gets dirty so who will give me clothes to wash. In the end it is shown that factory owners and factory workers come together to destroy his factory and him also.
In fact in the forties when the raw material for leggings/stockings were shifted from silk to nylon and they were so durable that the manufacturers had to ask the scientists to change the quality of the nylon so that it would wear and tear after sometime.
Now in some countries people have raised their voice about having the right to repair rather than replace. If Governments pass any legislation on these lines then will this planned obsolescence end. Well not necessarily because companies can still manipulate you. When Ford made and marketed the first car the model T, he expected that people who bought this car will not require another car as it was built so strong. In the 1920’s almost anyone who could afford a car had a car.
In 1925 Du Pont a chemical paint manufacturing company bought the controlling shares of General Motors and started experimenting with colors for the cars. The Ford T model was always black in color. So after experimenting a few years General Motors started selling cars in various colors with new color scheme every year. This was done not only to make the Ford car look outdated but also their own cars look outdated. These helped them in getting new customers as well as manipulate the old owners to replace the cars with new shiny colors. So what they did was to manipulate the peoples mind to make them buy new cars at regular interval. A dynamic obsolescence instead of planned obsolescence. Even though the cars were in perfectly working condition but people still wanted a new car with new color.
So the products that are manufactured can be actually of a better quality but then the companies have there own interests of increasing sales by launching new products and people like us have our own interest of keeping ourselves updated with the latest products. The combination of these two have made planned obsolescence a part of our life.
How much would be enough?
In my life I have used printed maps and also used GPS. I have seen days without a landline phone to mobile phones. I have seen days without internet to an internet dependent life. I have seen days of playing games in fields in rainfall to playing games on my laptop. I have seen days of using Kodak films to digital photography. I have seen days of hiring taxi by going to the taxi stand to calling Uber. I have seen days of syringes boiled and sterilized to be used again to disposable syringes. I have seen days of standing in railway booking counters to online purchase of railway tickets. I have seen days of no television to LED 4k televisions. The list can go on for quite a long time. In short I have seen the beginning of the technological innovation period.
The purpose of this technological development phase was to make the life of people easier. Previous to this innovation phase was the invention phase. The invention phase was then molded to innovate and make life easier. Now we are so used to these innovations in our daily life that life is dependent on these technologies. First the purpose of these innovations was to solve problems our daily life, now we are focused on creating problems so that we can provide a technological solution. We have moved from necessity is the mother of invention to innovation is the mother of necessity.
The older generation can still adjust to the pre innovation period but for the generation born after 2000 it will be a very difficult proposition unless forced by a natural calamity or a technological crash. I won’t go into details about how internet, mobile phones, social media, online shopping etc has affected our lives and how we feel incomplete without it, too much has been written about it and everyone knows.
The next generation of this technological innovation is taking us to the realms of AI. In most cases be don’t even understand that how much AI is affecting us in our daily lives. A few small examples from our daily life will give you the picture. The Alexa or Google Assistant is AI, the selection of portrait or landscape mode is AI, the filter to make you look beautiful is AI. The fully automatic cars are driven by AI, the drones dropping you shopping from Amazon etc is AI. If you are addicted to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc then you are subjected to massive dose of AI, all the notification feeds and recommended views is the work of AI. Similar is the case with Netflix, YouTube and Spotify. So is the video games you are addicted to. The online advertisement business worth billions of dollars is the product of AI which tracks your preferences and shows you what you want. The Google maps you are using in Uber are working on AI to select the best mode of transport and the route for you. The banking and financial services heavily use AI to suggest the best financial product to you which you constantly get in your e mail. Customer services of many companies are AI based and most likely you are chatting with an AI. Even security and surveillance systems use AI to monitor the feeds from hundreds of security cameras. This is not the end of the list but the beginning of AI revolution.
With all these technologies to back us up and make our life easier then why are people still sad, unhappy and seem to be missing something. We should be the happiest generation of human beings now. Why does it feel that having all these, we still feel like we are wearing the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ as in the famous folk tale.
This journey of technological innovation and AI which we have started is a never ending one and an irreversible one. We have started it but we will not be able to bring it to an end, we will only sink deeper into it. A time will come when it will fully dominate our lives but we will still not accept it.
If it makes our life happier and easier then there is nothing better like it. If it is making our life easier but unhappier then there is something wrong on it. If you ask me if I am happier now or then, then I would tilt towards ‘then’. If you ask me if life is easier now or then, then I will tilt towards ‘now’. But my views don’t matter because I have seen both the worlds so I may be biased. It is up to the new generation which has only seen the now to experience and decide how much technological innovation would be enough for them.
A day in future will come when all our organs will be replaceable and we may attain some sort of immortality. We will see a day when we will switch on/off our TV, fridge and all our home appliances just by thinking about it. We will replace our food with pills. We will produce customized babies. We will have virtual sex. We will travel around the world in minutes or bring the virtual world in our rooms. We will build cites underwater and live there. We will have relatives in Mars and moon and visit them on vacations. We will not need transport but teleportation pods. The possibilities are immense and unending. It will just be a matter of choice how much is enough.
Life does not come with a guarantee card
The Corona pandemic has opened up a Pandora’s Box of emotion among the population. Things which were not even in our back of the mind are now staring directly at our eyes. Life which looks so certain and predictable suddenly changes track and pushes us in the direction of uncertainty and unpredictability. We are most uncomfortable when things are uncertain and unpredictable. We are used to sitting on the steering wheel with everything under our control but when we feel we are on the back seat and destiny is driving then we start to panic.
Our generation has not seen anything like this. Even our father’s generation has not seen anything like this. So what is consigned to the history books is taking a re- birth. A few incidents from the last 100 years will be giving a better perspective.
The most notable one has been the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and originated from birds as H1N1 virus. It affected almost one third of the world’s population that is 500 million people and some estimates say that about 50 million died.
In 1957-58 there was the Asian flu from H2N2 virus again of avian origin. It started from Singapore then Hong Kong and spread till the United States. An expected 1.1 million people died due to this.
The next one came in 1968 and was the H3N2 virus. It was first found in the United States and it caused death to approximately 1 million people.
Then in 2009 came the H1NIpdm09 virus which was a variant of the H1N1 virus. This caused the death of around 0.3 million people in the first year itself.
So these were some of the major Pandemic in the last 100 years. For most of us we were either not born or we were not in the epicenter of these pandemics.
Then comes the man made killings. The first being the first World War from 1914-19. This lead to the deaths of an estimated 40 million including, both military personnel and civilians. The Second World War 1939-45 saw a death of an estimated 75 million people, both combatant and non combatant. The Korean war 1950-53 saw an estimated death of 5 million people. The Vietnam war 1955-75 death as per average estimate is around 3 million. The Cambodian genocide (Khmer Rouge) from 1975 to 1979 lead to the death of about 2.5 million people.
The list is not limited to this only but there are other ones like the Russian Civil war 1917-1922, Irish war of Independence 1919-1921, Irish Civil war 1922-1923, Kenya emergency 1952-1960, Malayan emergency 1948-1960, the Falkland war, the Gulf wars, the Bosnian war, the Kosovo war, the Afghan war, the war on terrorism and I may have missed out some more. The total death estimates of death in all these are estimated to be 187 million.
Other than these there have been famines, drought, floods, tsunami, volcano, nuclear failures like Chernobyl and Fukushima and many such incidents. From the above data it is clear that people have killed each other many times more than any type of virus or bacteria or germs.
Think of the people who have been at the epicenter of such events, the feeling of utter desperation and the inability to do anything except blame it on God and destiny. The effect of these incidents has been so great that individual value of life seems too trivial to matter- young and old, near ones or someone unknown. So should we be ‘happy’ that we are in the midst of a ‘virus attack’ than a ‘human attack’? The virus is expected to kill ‘lesser’ number of people than humans.
It is in such times that we realize that life doesn’t come with a guarantee card attached to it. The social scale of life expectancy is only for the record in better times, but ultimately it is just a figure on a piece of paper. Though a natural death in old age is what we all desire but when the tides turn and we face one such situation we should be ready to accept the inevitable, because after a certain point we do not control our destiny. The worst part is that even God as we call it is not controlling the destiny but it is someone in a position of power is the one who is controlling it- another human being.
Luckily we have not faced anything dramatic like this ever before. Our interaction with death is mostly limited to something within our close relatives and may be witness to some road accident. But now the fear is apparent and within the reach of everyone. Our mind is not ready for such an experience firsthand. So we are a worried lot.
Adding to the virus itself and its ability to kill is the failure of the government machinery to handle the load. In a populous and economically backward country like India, the specter of death is more real because there is a shortage of beds, medicine, ventilators and oxygen for critical patients. The healthcare system is collapsing. Though most such cases go unreported but it is a reality that people have died and dying every day for lack of proper treatment. Seeing such cases on TV is worrisome but when it becomes a reality for me or my immediate family member, it turns to fear, desperation and distress.
From last year there were talks of a second wave but by Oct- Nov 2020 things started to look better and life was on track again. The vaccine would come by 2021 first half and then we would have won over this virus. But no one expected that the virus will return as a particularly lethal mutated form just as the vaccination was starting. Also even vaccinated people are getting infected again. So now everyone knows that vaccine is not going to ensure complete protection. In April 2021 we are in a worse stage than April 2020.
From time to time nature gives its signal to know our limits. Nature being the boss creates extinction level events once in a few million years. We have created and named the Anthropocene extinction era, an era were we are the cause of extinction of hundreds of species. Though it is an over exaggeration but we are only a single species on this earth and when we are at the receiving end of things in a smaller way even, we find it hard to digest it.
My attempts to spread crypto currency adoption
Today I will tell you about my experience in convincing some of my friends to enter the world of crypto currency. There are many scholarly articles on problems on mass adoption of crypto currency but mine comes from my personal experience trying to convince my friends.
My friends from my school days are an educated lot with middle class background. A few have been able to climb the socio economic ladder and can be said to be among the higher income group now. They are my age group that is approaching 50. In this group I am only the one who is dabbling in crypto currency, rest all are not interested. One is a particularly good stock investor and he is full time into it.
So he was my first target to try to bring in the crypto world. He compares the crypto phenomenon with the dot com bubble of the 1990’s and 2000’s. As per him the crypto bubble will also burst one day just as the dot com bubble did and will lead to major loss of money to those who are into it. He is also of the opinion that once this bubble bursts there will be no regulatory recourse to people who will suffer as there is no regulation. Every country has a stock regulatory authority which intervenes in framing rules and also acts as an arbitrator for disputes. In crypto there is no such framework. It is just like the Wild West. The crypto world is too new to dive into; it needs time to stabilize for bigger investors to find it comfortable to invest.
Warren Buffet and the Indian version of Buffet that is Rakesh Jhunjhunwala are dead against crypto currency. I told him they have dealt stock for their life so they are biased towards it or having less knowledge about crypto. He said they are intelligent investors and it is not that they don’t understand crypto but they are apprehensive now because of the above mentioned reasons. This friend of mine keeps himself updated about the happenings like the launch of Coinbase IPO. I asked if he had invested in Coinbase but he said no for the same above mentioned reasons. Then I told him at least he can do it for the quick money he can make in this bull market but still he was not ready for it and is happy with the stock market. So I failed.
Then I targeted another friend of mine who is financially well off. He had no idea of crypto currency, so I explained it to him. His point was when I can do everything with digital payment through fiat then why would I need a crypto currency for peer to peer payment. He said I am comfortable with using my debit/credit card for paying for my grocery purchase, gas, rent, and other shopping. Where digital payments are not accepted then it is even easier to make payments in cash. ATM’s are now available in every nook and corner so getting cash is very easy. He also said that why would I use an intermediary in the form of a crypto platform and increase my work load when I can directly deal with another person or establishment with fiat money. He said that he will have to register in a crypto platform, do the KYC, transfer fiat, then convert into crypto and then use it as a payment method. Particularly in India with the fog of uncertainty about crypto regulation still lingering, it will not be prudent to invest in crypto currency. So I failed here also.
Then I targeted another friend. We had all the discussions about what it is, how it works and the earning potential. This friend of mine is a conservative investor who has not gone beyond savings account and fixed deposits. In India a savings bank account earns between 2.5 to 3 percent per annum and fixed deposits earn about 5 to 7 percent per annum. As a prudent friend I told him clearly the earning potential during bull market and the massive market crash scenario in bear market. This possibility of losing money put him off. He said I am happy with my steady fixed deposit income rather than face the uncertainty of a high fluctuating market. For him accepting the fact that he might lose money in the process was not acceptable under any circumstances. I failed here also.
Then I tried with another friend. He also dabbles in stock market a bit. He said that it is just like stock market, only the instrument is different. He again said all about regulations. For him a stock has some intrinsic value based on the company results and balance sheet. There is something tangible we are dealing with. Crypto currency is not a tangible asset and does not have any way to assess its value; it is all a speculative affair just like castles made in thin air. Such things will not last long or even if it last long then it will ultimately start losing its value. But he added only one thing, as I am his friend so he can put 1000 rupees (around 13 dollars). I failed here also.
Then I posted the following message 3 times in the Facebook group of the city I am residing - 'Anyone interested in knowing about crypto currency may contact me through messenger'. Not a single person responded though this group has 29.5k members. I also tried in a few WhatsApp groups I am in but again not a single response.
So a common man with limited or no knowledge about crypto currency is least interested about the block chain technology and its future potential. It doesn’t matter to him about the lofty ideas and principles behind the creation of crypto currency. The idea of a border less privacy feature without government intervention doesn’t matter to him. They are happy with the current system and do not want to try something ‘exotic’. The gave the above are the four types of logic for not entering the cryptoverse. Now I have stopped trying to convince anyone else of my friends as I know there answer will hover around one of the above. As my friends all know that I am the only one dealing with it, so I will wait for them to show interest and come up to me.
The grandest journey ever
Earth is changing constantly, every second, every hour. But we do not notice it being too small events. Even in our lifetime we hardly notice any perceptible change that affects us drastically. It is here that we make the biggest mistake that it will remain the same way for eternity. But we all also know that it is not the case - for us, for earth, and for this universe.
Today I will present the possible changes that are going to happen in the future in the grandest scale of events as expected by our present level of understanding. Also remember that the journey till now has been only 13.8 billion years which is peanuts compared to what lies ahead.
We are now in the Anthropocene era, an era which simply means that we humans have the ability to make a significant impact on our planet.
About 6 centuries from now that is around the year 2700 the magnetic field of the earth is likely to begin to flip.
Approx. 5000AD- drastic rise in sea levels
Approx. 7000 AD- A 30 meter diameter asteroid will hit earth.
Approx. 10500 AD- Star Antares about 554 light years away will go supernova. It is the 15th brightest star in night sky.
Approx. 15000 AD- Sahara desert will be tropical again.
Approx. 40000 AD- Voyager 1 will pass a nearby star.
Approx. 64000 AD- the interglacial period will end.
Approx. 96000 AD- super massive volcanic eruptions will begin leading to creation of new island chains.
Approx. 1,000,000 AD – The Apollo footprints on moon will fade away.
Approx. 1,600,000 AD- Betelgeuse will go supernova.
Approx. 2,700,000 AD – the stone monuments will start to erode away.
Approx. 9,000,000 AD- Earth will be subjected to gamma ray radiation bursts.
Approx. 13,000,000 AD- the moons of Mars will disintegrate and form a ring around Mars.
Approx. 27,000,000 AD- the rings of Saturn will start to disintegrate and vanish.
Approx. 74,000,000 AD- a major asteroid impact will happen.
Approx. 165,000,000 AD- The rearrangement of the continents into a super continent will take place.
Approx. 460,000,000 AD- The sun’s luminosity will start to increase, marking the beginning of the sun’s end.
Approx. 615,000,000 AD- Photosynthesis will begin to stop.
Approx. 860,000,000 AD- All plant life will cease to exist.
Approx. 1,200,000,000 AD – the oceans and seas will start to evaporate.
Approx. 2,900,000,000 AD all life forms will end on earth.
Approx. 3,000,000,000 AD- The Sun will start to expand and will ultimately destroy earth.
Approx. 11 billion years- The Sun becomes a white dwarf.
Approx. 1 trillion years- the stars begin to die and ultimately no new stars will get created.
Approx. 50 trillion years- the last of the red dwarfs will fade away. With the death of the last star the universe will be eternal darkness and the degenerate era will start. Only some white dwarfs using the last drops of its fuel will provide some pale illumination like that of a full moon.
Approx. 1 billion trillion years- By accident the collision of 2 brown dwarf stars may create an accidental new star. Otherwise only the collision of two dead stars may create some light. Any surviving life if surviving till then by any chance will have to take refuge around these stars.
Approx. 10 trillion trillion years- All stars will become black dwarf barely emitting any light.
Approx. 9 thousand trillion trillion years- Any object that has not escaped our galaxy will be pulled into the black hole at the center of the galaxy. The age of the black holes begin.
Approx. 1 million trillion trillion years- Any exotic advanced life form if somehow surviving till then will have only the rotational energy of these black holes.
Approx. 50 billion trillion trillion years- The universe will be accelerating faster may be faster than the speed of light.
By that point of time it is expected that atoms will also start decaying.
Approx. 5 trillion trillion years- Proton may start decaying and fall apart though this theory is still not proven till now. All matter then will cease to exist. What began from energy will fall back to energy.
On the grandest scale of events time has just begun to tick and if we compare this time scale with human life then the universe is just coming out of the womb. Most part of the life of universe will be cold empty and dark.
The universe gives only a small window of time for life as we know to survive. 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the fraction of the universe time is available for any type of life form to evolve and survive and then perish.
Approx. 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion years- Black holes are now the fundamental energy of the universe. Now the merger of black holes are the only events that take place.
Approx. 800 thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years- Black holes will also start evaporating and start vanishing into explosions of massive scale. As they start to explode they will lit up the sky for the last time like fireworks.
Even as the last black holes are going the universe keeps on expanding due to some unknown force which we don’t understand fully now. Some call it dark energy.
1 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years. The universe keeps on expanding till forever may be due to this dark energy. Pure, cold, dark space devoid of any matter and only energy, expanding forever. Unless we understand this energy fully or anything else which we have still not found out, we may not know whether it will also decay at some point of time leading to the big crunch. Or it may get boosted leading to the big rip.
This may be the outcome of this universe and there may be multiple universe, some of which having that window of life. Some expect that there may be a way to escape from this universe before it reaches entropy. Some say that there may be a possibility to create our own baby universe. Some say we are missing something, the seed that will lead to the creation of another universe with a similar timeline. The possibilities are endless and unknown.
So our life is both precious as well as trivial, a combination of contradiction. We still don't know about afterlife except our belief or disbelief. This opens up the possibility of living a reckless life or a meaningful life, if we are to live only once. The choice is ours.
We are all in this journey together with all our commonality and differences which our mind can think of. During this journey we will come closer sometimes and will be far apart sometimes but we will never be separate from each other- ever. For we have been destined to be a co traveler till the universe do us apart. We may not know each other ever but we know that you are there somewhere all through the journey.
A fool's view on intelligence
I am not intelligent enough to understand what intelligence is and what amounts to be called as intelligent. I am still a foolish person that way. What is intelligence is quite a debatable topic with no clear cut and agreed upon definition. The Cambridge dictionary describes intelligence as
the ability to learn, understand,
and make judgments
or have opinions that are based on reason
Every animal is intelligent in its own way because they have the ability to cater for their food, shelter and protection. They know what to eat, how to create a shelter for themselves and how to assess a threat and take evasive action. This ability comes from the ability to gather information from and of the surroundings, keep it in memory and teach itself to use that to its own benefit without repeating the whole process. An animal will find the way to go from place A to place B based on the information it gathers from the surrounding. It will then keep it in memory to repeat this journey while learning to take the shortest route also keeping in mind of any predators it might encounter on the way. It will find out areas where it can get food with least of effort. This ability cannot be just said to be instinct because it is processing the information in an intelligent way.
Some might say that it is animal instinct. Yes a part of it is instinct like the ability of a bird to fly is instinct but its selection of place to lay eggs so that they are protected from predators' is the use of intelligence. Just as our ability to walk is instinct but our ancient ancestors selecting shelters in cave to protect themselves was the use of intelligence.
These animals don’t understand Calculus or quantum mechanics or Beethoven or Shakespeare but still they are intelligent in their own way and as per their own requirement. When we talk about ants and see their work in creating shelter, arranging for food and storing it, there division of work and their social behavior it amazes us.
The latest theory on intelligence which has been given by Howard Gardner in 1983 is that of multiple intelligences, instead of a single intelligence quotient. Gardner says there are 8 types of intelligence, so let’s see them one by one.
First – verbal linguistic intelligence which deals with our ability to analyze information and share it, both verbally and written language. Here comes our ability to create oral communication, though this process started from making mere sounds in the beginning to giving meaning to those sounds and then creating script out of those sounds. All basic verbal communication is a creation of evolution both for animals, birds and humans. But only humans have created a written language that too multiple languages, whereas animals and birds of same types have a uniform method of verbal communication between them across the globe.
Second- logical mathematical intelligence which deals with our ability to solve abstract problems by using equations and formulas. Here comes our unique development in the field of science and technology. But when it comes to animals we know that hunting requires using logic and crude mathematics. A tiger knows till what distance it has to crouch and approach a prey, when to sprint and from what distance it should pounce. Otherwise it would fail every time. Those hunting in packs know how to cover all the escape tracts, how to approach the prey and from which direction will yield the best results. Same is the case with making shelters; animals and birds use logic so that it is able to protect its offspring’s.
Third- Visual spatial intelligence which deals with our ability to read maps and find directions and read graphical information. Humans have developed quite a mastery over it with our globetrotting and space exploration. But we also know of birds and animals making long distance movement every year across the globe or across hundreds of kms in search of breeding ground and pastures for food. There natural ability to process magnetic fields or a sense of direction and also the timing of such movement is indeed intriguing. Fishes in sea understand the tides and currents and how to use it. Humans lacking this natural sense rely on the ability to read maps and GPS.
Fourth- Musical intelligence deals with our ability to create various types of sounds using our vocal cord. This is an offshoot of our verbal intelligence. We can play with the sound in various tones and rhythms to create music. Music is in the nature too, in the form of crickets making a collective sound or frogs making a collective sound after rainfall. Some animals also make a collective sound to alert in case of danger. Now some species are monkeys known to be able to understand a danger call coming from other species of monkeys. Sounds of birds are particularly musical in nature. But in this field humans have a distinct advantage.
Fifth- naturalistic intelligence which deals with our ability to distinguish between different types of plants and animals, weather conditions. We have noted and classified different plants and animals based on their types, utility, life period etc. Also we have studied atmospheric weather conditions, oceans and tides and aquatic life forms. We have learnt how to use this information for our own requirement and good. But do animals lack in this field, I have never heard of an animal eating a wrong plant or animal and suffering food poisoning. All other life forms also understand the weather cycle around the year. A bear knows when to hibernate; a bird knows when to fly back to home. Birds and animals are particularly sensitive to understanding an impending storm or natural disasters.
Sixth- bodily kinesthetic intelligence is the ability to use the body like dancing or sports or even acting. Humans have used the body to create dance forms or fitness beyond the normal requirements of physical action though these skills are not related to our survival. Animals and birds work on opposite principle because there primary goals is survival that is getting food and protection from prey. So animals don’t waste energy on anything that does not serve these two purposes. As humans have gone beyond the level of requiring making effort for food and protection therefore they have the time and inclination for this type of intelligence. But when it boils doing to strength, agility and acrobatic ability most animals are equally adept when it comes to meeting its basic requirement.
Seventh- Interpersonal intelligence deals with the ability to deal with emotions, feelings and mental state of others. Humans have this ability to recognize these conditions in others. But animals are no less in this field also. Doesn’t your pet dog or cat understand you; it also shows its emotions to you which you understand and vice versa. Animals also have the ability to identify basic emotions among its species and react accordingly. Even interspecies relations are understood by some animals like dolphins. Don’t animals which live in some form of social structure like elephants and ants have a very good understanding of these things among the group? They also understand the feeling of a variety of emotions like love and sorrow.
Eighth- Intrapersonal intelligence deals with the ability to deal with the above mentioned feelings within themselves. It helps in understanding our mental state better and react accordingly. Though animals may not enjoy the variety of emotional states as humans, may be because they don’t need them but the basic instincts are still there in them. They also go through anger pain love and deal with them in their own way but our understanding of animal world in this field is quite limited.
So this was all about the latest idea of intelligence. No doubt humans have excelled in some of the fields like logic and mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, linguistic intelligence and visual spatial intelligence to some extent. But we still have very less understanding about the finer details of the animal world. These intelligences have taken us beyond the realms of nature and evolution.
But when it is a clash between human nature and human intelligence, humans are still at the mercy of human nature. Our human nature as an individual and as a social entity more often than not overshadows what we call intelligence. Almost every scientific invention and discovery which takes us beyond the realms of nature has been used as a double edged sword. Our knowledge of atoms have given us a treasure house of knowledge about how nature works but also unleashed the power of it. Our knowledge about biology and chemistry has given us life saving medicines but also biological and chemical killing agents not only as weapons but even daily use products. Our over exploitation of natural resources have given us a high carbon print.
Are these the signs of intelligence, the creation of ability to harm and destroy ourselves? Which other life form on earth is hell bent on fighting and killing its own type-none. Does intelligence require common sense? I guess not because if that was the case then common sense would prevail over intelligence. What does it teach us? I think it teaches us that as long as you are living as a part of nature you can live co existentially but when you try to decipher the laws of nature without the common sense of using it, it will become detrimental to your own existence. Sometimes it is important to look at other life forms which we consider inferior and learn from them rather than consider ourselves superior and start destroying ourselves. There is no doubt that we are the most superior intelligent race on this planet, its just that we need to do better than what we are doing now.
Religion is not a part of nature and we kill each other for it. Money is not the part of nature but we again kill each other for it. Country is not the part of nature but be kill each other for it. On the other hand we are ready to kill each other for water, oil, land and natural resources. Nothing escapes our human nature.
I am not implying that we stop what we are doing or regress back to the living of animal kingdom or the cave man; I only impress the fact that we should use some intelligence in what we are doing, the type of intelligence that Gardner did not mention. We are still not intelligent enough to control our human nature.
Greetings from Earth
We have all watched the doomsday movies like ‘Mars attacks’, ‘Independence day’ where aliens attack earth and try to destroy it. Movies like ‘Armageddon’ where an asteroid is on collision course with earth or, movies on mega natural disasters with the ability to wipe of human existence. Such movies are high voltage drama and make a good entertainment. But such movies have also shown the possibility of one of the incident happening in reality though the chances of it may be very remote.
But if such a situation happens then there will be some information available in the cosmos that will carry the proof that we once existed. Just as we hear stories of sealed bottles with messages from long time back found floating in the ocean, only to be retrieved by someone. Though un-intentionally, we have been sending to out radio and TV signals to outer space for about a 100 years. The furthest these signal have reached is 200 light years in diameter. Though 200 light years may seem a lot by our standards but it is actually a very miniscule distance in galactic measurement. Also these radio bubbles thin out very fast and therefore will require a very strong receiver to catch them at extreme distances.
Then there was the 'Arecibo message' which was transmitted towards the M13 cluster of stars in 1974. It also contains some information of earth in binary terms. But it would take 25000 years to reach that cluster of stars in. If someone receives it and decodes it and sends a reply then it would again take another 25000 years to receive it back on earth. A lot would have changed on earth by then.
Next is creating a time capsule or plaque with some essential information of earth and us. But keeping the time capsule on earth may not be a good idea as the purpose of that time capsule is to survive even if earth gets destroyed. So the next best option is to keep it in a satellite rotating the earth. The same was done with a satellite named ‘Lageos 1’ sent out in 1976. Its primary role was to make precise measurements of location on earth. It also carries a plaque on which is written number 1 to 10 in binary and diagram of earth’s continents and oceans as it was 250 million years ago, the present day as well as what it may appear 8.4 million years from now. The satellite is expected to last 8.4 million years even though it will fall back to earth due to drag at some point of time.
Further away from earth comes the geo stationary orbits where at present about 450 satellites are encircling the earth. These orbits are far enough from earth to get affected by earth atmosphere and its disturbances and will last much longer in the atmosphere than the lower orbit ones like the Lageos. So these satellites can be our technological pyramids in space which when discovered by aliens if ever will give them a glimpse of us. When these satellites complete their life cycle there orbit is pushed away from the main orbit to what is called the graveyard orbit. In this graveyard orbit these now defunct satellites will keep orbiting the earth as tombs. A few of these satellites contains such information which we want the aliens to know. One such is ‘Echostar XVI’, which carries a silicone disk containing 100 images of earth. These geo stationary satellites are expected to last billions of years so there chances of discovery by aliens is more.
But if our solar system gets destroyed or the aliens don’t plan to visit earth, in that case we have to bank on the interstellar satellites which have truly crossed the boundary of our solar system and are moving in outer space. At present there are 11 human made objects flying outside the solar system. Out of these the 5 probes are Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizon. These objects are the farthest from earth and are our technological emissaries for the next billions and billions of years. These probes are the most likely candidates to be found by aliens when it passes close to other star cluster or even planets.
The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 have plaques attached to it containing the diagram of hydrogen atoms (because it is the most abundant element in the universe), the picture of a male and a female standing in front of the probe to give an idea about the heights, and the location in the milky way and also our location in the solar system.
The Voyager 1 is currently the farthest from earth and currently moving at the speed of 17 kms per second. In another 40000 years both these Voyagers will pass about 2 light years distance away from other stars. It is then that it is hoped that some form of intelligent life forms may get inkling about us. Both the Voyagers have a gold plated copper disc with some Uranium 238 so that by studying it these aliens can make out how old it is. This record contains 116 images of earth and also audio and video recording of humans animals and songs. It also has engraving of how to use the record; our location in space and that of a hydrogen atom. It also contains a message from Jimmy Carter the then President of USA.
We are throwing a stone in the darkness and across time with the hope that it will bear our proof of existence. Information that will last billions of years, lost or found, but will bear a testimony of our civilization and its advancement. Maybe some intelligent life form will get it; some may try to contact us, ignore us, and conquer us. Or they may not be developed enough to reach back to us as we are incapable of it now.
But it will last for a very long long time as a proof – ‘**we exist**’ or’ **we existed**’ at some corner of this universe.
The rise of the dragon
A brief account of China's economic growth and challenges to itself and the world.
October 1st 1949, the People's Republic of China as we know today came into existence, led by Mao Zedong, a communist revolutionary leader. At that time it was a primarily agrarian society. Despite his success in unifying China, its 80% population lived in poverty and hunger. On coming to power he started a process of rapid industrial growth but it soon started to falter and the failure of this experiment led to a famine from 1959 - 1961. His dream of ' the great leap forward' was at the expense of agriculture. After the famine Mao launched the cultural revolution to preserve his way of communism and remove the last remnants of capitalism from China. The estimate of deaths as a state policy ranges from 5,00,000 to 2 million. Though by 1968 he understood its political and social failure but it continued till his death in 1976. Though the famine was over but poverty and hunger remained as everything was rationed. His death lead to the fall of the 'gang of four', the closest associates of Mao. His policy failure lead to the rise of a new leader who took a different approach altogether.
The person responsible for the beginning of the change was 74 year old Deng Xiaoping. He was the Secretary General of the Communist Party. For 10 years as the Secretary General of the party he observed how a great man who created China also was destroying it. So his main priority was to get China of the economic shamble and remove poverty. He knew he was old and time was not on his side to he had the sense of urgency in everything he did. And what he did was to go against the communist ideas of Mao. He shifted his focus from state ownership and a centrally planned economy to a free market economy. He opened up China to the world through foreign investment and legalized private ownership and business. He say how Singapore Hongkong Taiwan and South Korea had become the manufacturing hubs and wanted to replicate it in China. He started making domestic manufacturing bases, special economic zones particularly in the coastal belt. He used the agriculture incomes to subsidize industries thereby reducing input cost drastically. Through these steps he could catch a pie of the ever-growing export economy.
He basically opened up the doors for any one who wanted to create wealth. The people who were continuously subjugated by the communist regime for so many years now had the opportunity to rise and innovate and try new things, for they had seen the worst of poverty in there life. So the people of China stood up to the challenge and opportunity given by this old man. His gamble of change paid off well where the per capita income of the people increased from 40 dollars in 1978 to more than 10,000 USD. China's economy grew at the rate of about 9.8% for the last 40 years.
Shenzhen was the first coastal city to be developed as an industrial hub and special economic zone and now many more have replicated the Shenzhen model of development. The small coastal village of the 70's is now bigger than Hong Kong in matter of size as well as economy. Deng stepped down in 1992 but he had fulfilled his dream of making China a rising super power.
His efforts were further carried forward by the next generation leaders like Jiang Jemin , Hu Zintao and the current Xi Jinping.
In 2001 China joined the world trade organization which opened up tremendous business opportunities. This opened up the worlds developed economies and also access to the worlds resources. The low manufacturing cost made all major global companies flock to China to establish production units. This opening up of the world markets gave the second push to the Chinese economy which led to such a greater control over the world economy. This made China the 2nd most powerful country in the world.
This new wealth created by China had its bad effect also. It started corrupting the system and the party itself, there was economic imbalance between the city and the villages. Xi Jinping, when he came to power took upon the task of removing corruption in the party. In the first 5 years about 200 high ranking officials were prosecuted. Xi also made new economic policies to keep the countries economic engine running. The main one being 'Made in China 2025' which is focused on robotics, technology and IT. He also initiated the 'Belt and road initiative' to connect and create infrastructure in 152 countries for ease of business. These are all part of his 'China dream' - a dream where every Chinese is wealthy at micro level as well as a rejuvenation of the long history of Chinese civilization and be at the center of the world stage.
But he is facing headwinds now from USA as Donald Trump accused China of stealing US jobs and cheating on trade deals. Trump imposed taxes of billions of dollars on Chinese imports and this led to tit for tat by both countries. But it has also affected Chinese economy as GDP growth fell to 7% levels. Now countries view China's policy of helping other countries as a way of creating economic and debt trap. Many poor African nations are already feeling the pinch of China's economic aid and the clauses that govern the aid. Questions are being raised whether the Chinese economic policy will be sustainable or not. People are questioning China's hidden agenda of regional and world dominance. China's military aggressive policy in South China sea, East China sea is seen as a danger to regional peace in Taiwan and even in Japan. Its policy towards Uyghur Muslims is criticized world wide. The constitutional amendment which makes him to hold office as long as he lives is seen as a dictatorial move. China's authority is being increasingly challenged by Hongkong with ever increasing protests to restore democracy.
So Xi Jinping has a difficult road ahead to balance the economic growth, political environment and its status as a world power without antagonizing the the other nations.
Throughout history the world has seen a tilt in power balance every few centuries. In the last 500 years first the European countries ruled, then came the American economic supremacy and now China is developing as the new power center. Any country which has passed through this phase has justified its supremacy by the sheer dint of its power, and brushed the atrocities under the carpet. Though the world is now mostly anti communist but the transformation China achieved in the last 40 years has to be recognized and given credit, more so because it achieved all this maintaining a fine balance between communism and capitalism. No country is perfect after all, if China has its Tiananmen square then USA has its period of white supremacy and slavery, European countries have its history of exploitation of third world country and its resources.
The next 50 years will be an interesting watch of this power play.
The pale blue dot
That is what we call earth, our home for about 80 odd years if we are lucky enough to live that long. That pale blue dot is so small in comparison to the size of the universe. Or leave alone the universe, in comparison to our galaxy that even if it did not exist, it won’t matter to the universe or the galaxy. A small astronomical or earthly event is all that is required to remove the pale blue dot from the picture frame of the universe; it’s only a matter of time. Astronauts who have been lucky enough to see this pale blue dot have told on returning that on a wider context all the troubles and preoccupations which seemed so important earlier now seem to be meaningless.
The more we understand the grandeur of the universe the more we are realizing our pointless and trivial existence. The creation of life on earth is millions of years old after millions of year’s effort to create it. We are the latest creation endowed with the gift of intelligence.
Through our limited knowledge we don’t even know whether we are the only life bearing planet or not. If we are not the unique ones then we are just like the others, just a biologically lucky group of species. If we are the only ones then we are unique but does that uniqueness really matter, it can be just accidental also. It makes us special but does that make us more valuable because there is no one else to judge our value other than ourselves. It sounds similar to our ego- we give value to ourselves.
This sense of value overflows into the sense of power, power over none other than us. The outcome of this overflow of power is known to us, history is riddled with blood coming out from injuries caused by arrows to bullets.
If we cut off the human life on this earth then the earth and life as it is would be the same, living in its natural habitat. All the inventions of humans to give a new shape to this earth, does it serve any grand purpose. Is the earth or our galaxy or the universe even bothered about these inventions? Or is it just a futile attempt to impress our value and power on something that is not remotely interested in it.
So should we stop doing what we are doing as we are so small in the grander scale of time and space? All the people who were instrumental in shaping our human history, in a better or worse way, did it serve any purpose?
The answer depends on what outlook you have. If we consider all the inventions and discoveries we have made to make our life easier, to enhance our knowledge then surely we are serving the purpose of intelligent life which we have been bestowed upon. We have created a mental framework as to what is good for us and bad for us and are continuously striving to improve ourselves. Though none of it really matters on a grander timeframe of eons and epochs but it surely matters in the lifetime scale of a human. We have tried to create a purpose for ourselves.
Our focus and priorities are based on our lifetime. But if we add a few more lifetimes then the perspective change. 80 years ago the world was fighting the Second World War and thought that after the defeat of the Germans the world would be a better place. 200 years ago the British were dominating the world through there colonies, it was said that the sun never sets in the British Empire. 500 years ago the Muslims were ruling India and it seemed that it would never end. A 1000 year ago America which was a country of aboriginals is now the strongest power in the world. So events which were so profound in its time lose its essence in the maze of history. People who were once comfortable without electricity, if brought back to life now will not be able to live without it.
Whatever we considered valued have now changed with time, over a couple of lifetimes. But with our limited physical timeline we consider what we are doing as a collective human effort as the most important thing in history. But all things ultimately become footnotes in history books. I have only talked about a 1000 years, if we take further leaps back in history then human beings are a blip.
All our values, purpose and power is limited to this earth. We a part and parcel of this nature, we cannot antagonize the nature and hope to survive. Nature is all powerful and has the capability to bring humans to its knees in days. As long as our roads do not cross each other we will survive and flourish. Once we start considering ourselves supreme beings then that would be the beginning of the end of human race. The sad part is that we are very near to that cross section of roads.
For a small minority what mankind is doing is of little importance because they know that everything done by it is impermanent in nature. They have created their own values and purpose where all material gains are immaterial to them. They believe in the grander scale of events. So are these people wrong. I won’t say them to be wrong either.
The above picture gives a contradictory perspective towards life on 'earth' time scale. We are here for only 2 seconds out of 12 hours and we have left a mark for ourselves for only 1/10th of a second. Within this fraction of a second we have done some amazing things as well as pretty destructive things for this planet.
That is the beauty of human life, nothing is absolute right or wrong. It is we who are sitting on the steering wheel and driving the car of life. The road is laid out in front of us by our mind and we are free to drive on whichever road we wish. We have the liberty to feel ourselves as the king of earth in our short lifespan or consider this life as an illusion ready to be replaced by another illusion.
But the fact which also cannot be ignored is that we are writing history on the sands of time sitting on the shores of a rising sea.
@aniruddhasen
