Anatomy of misery

[Still writing..]

It is natural for us, human beings, to frequently think about different areas in our lives where there are misery and pain.  It is important to think about them because realizing the miseries is first of three important steps towards em betterment our lives.  Ignoring that, unless we absolutely realize it is not possible to ameliorate, is not a solution as that leads to unhappiness for long time.  The second step is to understand the imaginary situation in which that misery does not exist.  This is not always rather easy.  There can be multiple situations where that misery does not exist, but we may get other miseries which cause our overall pain to increase and we may find ourselves in worse overall situation.  So it is important to understand which set of situations, if any, will remove the misery in a way where we can improve the overall situation.  The third step, of course, is to analyze ways in which we can reach to that state where overall condition is improved through removal of misery.  It is important to understand that when we say misery, we talk about a pain that our body and/or mind is undergoing at an instance.  The relationship between physical pain and mental pain is quite close.  Yet we can, most of the time, identify the reason of misery to be physical or mental(emotional).  For example, source of hunger is physical even though it has significant impact on our mind.  Similarly, lack of freedom and dignity is an emotional misery even though that may also have significant physical impact.  E.g. in case of slaves and wage earners in various manufacturing institutions. Let us get back to this later.

Even though they cause one another, just as we discussed, emotional and physical miseries have different characteristics.  Human beings can realize physical miseries much more readily than emotional miseries.  Under usual circumstances our body responds quite promptly to discomfort.  For example if I am seating on a chair that is not comfortable, we realize it quickly and then we change the chair or seat somewhere else or do something else to remove the discomfort.  Our mind however acts lot slower in responding to uncomfortable situations.  Of course some have more tolerance than others, but overall our mind tend to tolerant some amount of discomfort.  For example, apart from some extreme cases, generally it takes human beings some time to find out whether two people can adjust well with each other.  There are of course examples of love at first sight and hate at first sight.  But they are quite rare compared to the usual cases where two people become friends and then slowly starts to develop a joyous or a hateful relationship.  When it comes to understanding the future states where a misery is removed, we are much better in imagining about removal of physical miseries, barring our scientific limitations, than emotional miseries.  For example, if I get a burn it is easy for me to understand the state where the burn is cured.  But if a relationship is broken, it is mostly complicated to analyze the future states in which the emotional misery of the breakup is cured.  When we try to analyzing different ways of reaching the possible better states from a state of misery similar kind of results resurface.  It is generally much easier to figure out how to reach a future state where a physical misery is removed, as opposed to find a way to remove an emotional misery.  One clear proof of that is the observation that study of cures for physical misery is a well established branch of science, whereas the study of cures for emotional misery, psychology, is, even today, largely a field of philosophy and science mixed. 

One aspect of misery that needs good understanding is how do we realize it.  One way to think about this is that any kind of misery is always realized by our mind.  Let us talk about physical miseries first because that is easy to understand.  Say I got a burn,  The pain does not come so much from the chemical degeneration of the cells but due to the electrical signal that our neurones carry to our mind which then interprets them generating what we feel as physical pain.  Now suppose someone lost his one finger in an accident.  That causes a complex set of miseries.  The misery from the pain of the wound.  The utilitarian misery in the future rising from not being able to use that finger.  The emotional misery rising from the realization that how the future could have been with the finger and how it is actually going to be without it.  Also, the misery from the loss of aesthetic appeal of his hand.   One can categorize the first two as physical memories and the last two as emotional miseries.  But one thing that is common is that all of them are realized by the mind. 

Physical and emotional misery, from the point of view of realization have one important distinction.  Physical misery is more or less absolute in nature.  For example, I am either hungry or not.  The fact that some one else is more hungry than me does not make my misery of hunger go away.  If I my finger is burning, my pain will not be ameliorated by hearing from someone that his finger is burning too.  On the other hand, emotional memory has some relative aspect.  For example, we realize lack of freedom when we see other people who are more free than us. We feel a sense of sadness when we don't have something that we deserve but at the same time many others have the same thing even if they don't deserve.  Also, emotional misery may lessen with time without any change in any external or sensory factors.  I don't believe in the statement that time heals all miseries, but we certainly learn to live being less hurt by our emotional miseries with time.
One distinction between physical and emotional misery lies in the way they originate.  Physical misery always originate from our sensory organs and carried by neurons to our brain.  Brain then creates the sensation of pain which we feel.  On the other hand emotional misery has much more  complex origin.  It is created by our brain by complex analysis of information received by brain from memory and/or different sensory information.  It consist of much complex analysis of quite a lot of information to give us a particular feeling.  That is one of the reasons many times even we ourselves don't know why we feel sad or happy.  Emotions are much more complex and abstract forms.  

A classification of utopias

A system, whether scientific, social or political, goes through changes over time.  Some time such changes are perceivable, some time not.  But at any given point in time, such a system has a state, which can be called the present state of the system.  From that state, we look forward and try to understand what may be a possible future state of the system.  Also, what may be the desirable future states of the system in future.  Unlike scientific systems, an arena where most of the driving forces of change come from natural laws, in sociopolitical systems the significant actors are mostly human beings.  Of course we are sharing this world with other beings, but for now let us confine to ourselves.  That naturally makes us, human beings, more concerned about understanding the properties of both possible future states and desirable future states.  One can possibly argue that the desirable future states, which for lack of good word let me call utopian states, of such a system at any point in time may not be of much rational concern if it is not a subset of the possible future states.  After all what good it is to meditate over the properties of something that has no possibility of occurrence in future.  For example, we can think of an highly desirable future state of our society where everyone lives for ever.  Of course that will cause other problems in the society, e.g. food crisis due to over population.  But for the sake of the discussion even if we accept that those problems will be magically solved due to super scientific invention of some sort in food production, is it really of any importance discussing this since it is not a possible future state given death is a natural law?  Since no one will live for ever, ever, this is an utopian state which can be rejected through reason.

There are other kinds of utopian states of a sociopolitical system which have more discussion worthy values.  Such states are desirable, but we can not reason them out of possibility.  We also can not reason how we can reach those utopian states from the current state of the society.  It is not really known to be a state dangling in impossibility, but also we don't know which path of sociopolitical decisions will take us there.  But since that does not completely eliminate the possibility of existence of such a path going from current state to the utopian state, there is some virtue in discussing properties of such a state.  One needs to be careful that elaborate understanding of such future states does not necessarily give us a silver bullet.  That is, we may not be able to use that knowledge to compare between two possible future states to evaluate which one is a more desirable one.  Ancient and many modern thinkers have spent their life time in meditating on properties of such utopian systems, what can also be called ideal systems.  Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle left elaborate details of what they call the city-state system.  They thought there is only one good state of the society and it is job of the thinkers to find out what that is and how to mold the existing sociopolitical structure so that it will put us on the right track to reach the ideal city-state society.  They spent an enormous amount of thinking in understanding the properties of such an ideal state.  In more modern times, philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Kant, Rawls have spent a great deal of there thinking behind such an approach, formally called as Transcendental Institutionalism.

Then of course there are desirable states which are in the reach of reason and we can establish some rational theory based on our current knowledge on how to reach that desirable state from our current state.  One trivia about such an utopia that is worth discussing about is that almost all of us have good description of such a state of the society in our minds.  In fact a common human being, at any point in time, or at least in different points in time, will be able to provide multiple descriptions of such utopias.

Let's name these utopian states as Impossible Utopia, Transcendental Utopia and Rational Utopia.

The question that immediately comes to mind is what good of their study anyway?  Well, the study of rational utopias is intuitively and by experience justified because those thoughts are major driving factors in our sociopolitical decision making.  They are forces which are carrying the chariot of our civilization from one state to another.  The value of the study of other two utopias is not as apparent.  Because they are derived mostly out of a priori knowledge, their properties are not polluted by experience.  Hence, I think, study of their properties help us identify certain properties in our current state which are highly desirable and should be kept.  Also, certain properties in our current state which are highly undesirable and should be eliminated asap.  So in principle their knowledge works like a filter.  Unfortunately it is not always practical to get rid of the bad ones or implement the good ones.  For example - decease, something we know and understand to be bad.  But currently we are incapable of getting rid of it completely from the face of earth.  Nevertheless, it identifies that progress should be made in that direction.  Poverty is another example.

One serious problem with such utopias is the very existence of many of them.  Plurality.  The plurality itself is not as troublesome as the fact that the nature of those utopian worlds often contradict each other.  I would like to point out that I am not talking about the contradictions present in the rational methods of taking the current state of the society to those utopian states.  I am talking about the contradictions present in the very properties of those utopian states.  These contradictions are less visible in Impossible Utopias, E.g. we all will agree that decease should be eliminated from the face of earth.  As we move through transcendental utopias to more realistically achievable rational utopias, these contradictions become very prominent.  Some would like to think of an ideal world where every place is urban and full of thriving human activities.  Some would like an ideal world where there are nature and forests everywhere and human beings sharing the planet in harmony with other living beings.  On the other hand an utopia where decease is rare may not be the utopian thinking of someone who is a doctor by profession.  As funny as it sounds, personal interests and limitations of human mind consciously or unconsciously often influence the design of ideal worlds that we want to be part of.  Further I want to understand the relationship between human mind and the source of these contradictions in relation to the society that I am most interested in, India. 

Idea of a customizable performance index in a democratic system

A Democratic system should work based on continuous feedback on its performance.  Without that it works like a uncontrolled and unchecked system which eventually drifts from its original goals set forth by its founding fathers.  Right now in India the feedback system is largely based on input from the media.  But, what media provides is news.  That has the following problems:

1. It may, and largely is, biased.
2. There are lot of information, but often the source of those information are not presented in structured manner and hence becomes difficult to validate the information. 
3. Many times the sources are just not trust worthy. 
4. Generally media reports news which they consider news worthy.  There is a wide area of information which is very valuable for evaluating performance of a Democracy but not news worthy for media.
5. The output of media news is optimized for public reading/hearing but not optimized for doing further analysis by computer algorithms.

There are some other feedback systems.  For example there are wealth of information hidden in various survey orgaziations' data bases.  E.g. Survey of India, Ministry of program and implementation.  While there might be ways to extract these data for further processing, the systems themselves are not really optimized for collecting and analyzing information for evaluating performance of the Democratic system.  Also these information are not readily accessible to common people for digesting in a way they can comprehend.
In modern India, we have got other ways of collecting information about government matters, RTI.  But while RTI provides a mechanism to access important government related information, it is not really easy enough for general citizen to file and understand these on regular basis.
So what we observe is that we already have several sources of information and mechanism of collecting them in place.  Now what we need is organizing those information and performing analytics in a way in which it serves the goal of becoming a perfect feedback path for the working Democratic system.
In order to do that we need to define first what we mean by performance of a Democratic system.  When do we say we are performing good as a Democratic system and when do we say we are doing bad.  There have to be precise measures using which one can say it is doing good or bad.  If bad, how bad.  If good, how good.  That is a complex question and in subsequent writings I will get in details of my thoughts on this.  But at this point what we need to keep in mind is the definition of performance may very among different analysts.  The goal of this article is to show that it is possible to create a system where different analysts, who can be anyone from a minister to a school student, can create their own definitions of democratic performance.  This has to be done with the following conditions in mind:

1. Creating the definition will be easy enough so that one does not need to be highly computer literate to create that.
2. The definition itself, including the data it is analyzing and the results of the analysis, all needs to be in public space which any one can.
3. There has to be a public comment and voting system in those definitions so that some of those can naturally bubble up as the most famous ones and eventually will reflect what people really want.

Information

We can collect lot of relevant information from various sources.  It is very important that we categorize these information into different hierarchical buckets so that people understand them easily.  For example, at broad level they can be categorized into buckets of "Economic", "Social", "Religious" etc.  Then we can further categorize "Social" into "Literacy level", "Hygiene" etc.  And so on.  For this article, let me assume a flat structure. 
Let us assume there are total Cn different categories of information : C[1], C[2],.. C[N].
Now let us define a general performance function F which works on these Cn categories of information and yields a result.  Then we can say, performance P = F(C).  This is true for a single regional unit where P can be assumed to be same.  But in general we will find P needs to be different from one regional unit to other.  For example the performance criteria of a village will be different from the performance criteria of a town.  So if there are Rn different types of regions(R), then performance becomes P = F(R)(C).
In a simplistic case let us assume R is not varying.  So we can have P = F(C).  Now let us assume a lenear formula for F where F = x[1]*c[1] + x[2]*c[2] + ... + x[Cn]*c[Cn].  Where x[i] is a real number (i from 1 to Cn).  Then we can write P = X * C.

Analysis

In this model we notice that if:

1. We can create a system where C is available to people via Internet APIs and other medium
2. C is updated sufficiently frequently (Because actual real time is impossible to achieve) 
3. We can create a system where people can easily create X

Then we can build a system where the P = A * C is calculated on real time or on demand and presented to the whole nation.  Graphical interfaces can be built where even a politically illiterate person can interpret P.  Mechanisms can be built where these information are distributed everywhere free of cost or at cheap price without the helps of internet as well(E.g. through schools, post offices).
One can easily see that X itself is not a constant measure.  In general each analyst will have their own defintion of X which will be visible and ready for comment and feedback from people.  So each P can then be subjected to further analytics to obtain a more reliable nationwide performance index.

So we can see that it is possible to build a customizable system which can constantly provide feedback about the performance of a democratic system.  I think such a system can play many more important roles, I will discuss them in further writings.  The construction of such a system, specially to create the initial structure, is an enormous job in an already established system.  I will try to address those challenges one by one in future notes. 

The falling apple and moral grayland

Isaac Newton, without his 'Sir' and all the associated intelligence, was sitting in the orchard.  Suddenly it happened!  An apple fell on Newton's head.  He picked the apple from ground and became thoughtful.  He wondered why the apple fell in the direction it fell?  May be it fell in the same direction his eyes were pointing to, Newton thought.  He was convinced by his reasoning because he was indeed looking down at the earth.  While deeply engaged in his thoughts looking down, another apple fell.  His hypothesis found stronger foundation based on two events supporting it.  Curious, he looked up to see how many apples were there on that tree. As he looked, another apple fell right on his nose.  "Blue blistering barnacles!".  Jumped off Newton.  He looked up again and wondered, "Why?".  Then came the wise man, walking down the street.  He saw Newton and felt like contributing something to his great thoughts.  "The world is a complex place, Newton." - shouted wise man.
"Hmm.. that is right", thought Newton.  So the new law, which is going to be famous, consists of two rules:

1. If you are seating under an apple tree, an apple will always fall in the direction your eyes are pointing.
2. The world is a complex place so there will be deviations to the above law.

Back home, Newton was happy that his beautiful little theory could indeed explain all the falling apples on earth.  After a sumptuous dinner Newton rested his satisfied mind and stomach on an incline in the backyard of the house under the vast universe of glittering stars.  He imagined each star as an apple on the tree.
"But..", thought Newton, "If there are more people under the same tree looking at different directions, apple will still fall in only one direction."  But this thought contradicted his newly formed theory so strongly that he resented the thought and became restless.
"For now let me assume that there can always be maximum one person under one tree", chuckled Newton.  "Later I will prove that my assumption is true." That seemed to be easier.
Next day Newton was back to the shade of the same tree.  He was consumed in thoughts of how to prove that there will be only one person under one tree, even though there may be multiple people under the shade of the tree.  Meanwhile, a dirty poor fool, who was watching Newton deeply troubled by the falling of apple, called "Sir.. Why do you worry so much about falling apples?  They always come to the ground.  It's no more complex than that."
"Poor fellow..", Newton sympathized.  "I think he is so sick that he could never raise his head up to see apples going high.."
He tried to imagine how the poor fellow never enjoyed the beauty of an apple flying upward.  But.. the world suddenly stopped in front of him.  The falling leaves, the falling apples, the falling rain drops.. everything stopped.  Nothing went up.  Everything fell to the ground irrespective of where he looked.

"Gravity!"  - Newton was relieved.  

== END ==

[Note: I put down my thoughts in this story only to refer to this back in my later writings.  The core idea is that often we are provided reasons for certain actions by power or authority which strongly contradict with facts.  Generally these justifications are philanthropic in nature and false. In an authoritarian system the anomalies are mostly ignored.  But in a democratic system these are justified through state run propaganda system stating "The world is a complex place." or something in similar lines.  This is done to smear the truth, which is often simple and often points to evil intentions of the authority.  As a matter of fact, this level of conformity from people is seen more in a stable democratic system where people are complacent and largely politically illiterate.  This is not what should happen, but this is what mostly happen.]

Thoughts on a popular metaphor

The metaphor 

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

My thoughts 

I agree with the motivational aspect of this popular metaphor. But I think I see some oversimplifications/deviations from reality in this. First marks can be distributed without any limitation on its sum. For example every one can get A+. But every person in a country can not be super rich. It can be assumed in a small segment of a society, E.g in a company or in a family or in a class. But not in a country or in the world whole. Because total amount of wealth/resources is limited. Second, when we attribute poverty of an individual solely to his lack of hard work or talent (later is not part of the metaphor but of Rand's philosophy) we are imagining a world where every individual is presented with equal opportunities at birth. Which is utopian for a complex society. John Galt may be right in the world portrayed in Atlas Shrugged, but Atlas Shrugged itself presents a limited scope of the world. This is not a criticism of capitalism, but I think this metaphor is inappropriate for capitalism. Interestingly, from that aspect marks is metaphorically more closer to different kind currencies.. like happiness, social respect. Everyone can be happy or be respected even in a big society as there is no physical limit on it. But then we are approaching socialism.

Eternal

Golden dust of sahara covering sky

On its day job, hopeless earth

Making rounds and rounds of nothing

Storms of wrath..

Trying to scratch surface of dignity,

'Why don't you take me to her?'

You are on moon..

Far away from heaven

Far away from grey haven of mundane vigor

Darkish streets.. 

Breaking rules from Timor to Somalia

Bridging gap from here to eternity,

'Why don't you take me to her?'

I stare those eyes dark,

Hovering from star to star.

Through unbearable density of dusky ether

I know you see me.

Cross-country

Two thousand miles
A pair of eyes
Street ends to the sky
A smile full moon
Fog dust and dryness
A dimple on desert smooth
Aroma of burnt flesh
A drop of water strolling skin
Sleepy mind through rising sun
A blink of lifetime
Shadows of passing fears
A brow tilted
Frozen mountains touching dreams
A world on the tip of nose
Mirage of end hopping time
A dream - hand in hand