A small milestone

Sometime around May 2006, I came across an ad from one “Staffordshire university” in UK, offering long distance course in “sustainable development” (leading to an MA). I felt it would provide a good learning opportunity, and enrolled. So now, after three years and a whopping four classes, i earned a “university post graduate certificate with merit”. I opted to terminate at the certificate level rather than doing the full MA level, as the course content dint fully cater to my current interest which has “environmental philosophy” , eco-spirituality kind of slant. That said, for anyone in India (i don’t know if the program is offered elsewhere) interested in sustainable development issues from mainstream activism point of view, i would recommend the program. It provides some good conceptual foundations. (Be forewarned .. one has to be self-directed and self-motivated .. don’t expect too much mentoring from the instructors).

Hiatus

Since the financial crisis became full scale last September, i tried to educate myself about what really happened, where we are going and what steps i need to take towards maintaining my personal financial health. One of the outcomes of this investigation is that my distrust of paper currencies (as a medium for long term store of wealth) has increased. Blame it on the central banks who (through various debt monetization methods) have seemingly unlimited powers to create money out of thin air, or banks’ ability to lend multiple times of actual money that is deposited (fractional reserve banking), or governments’ ability to spend limitlessly simply by issuing new bonds. No body knows for sure where we are going with all this, but many pundits on the internet seem to believe that our money system is being seriously mismanaged, and it will lead to considerable inflation in the future as all the debt that has accumulated in the last few decades is simply inflated away. Although we seem to be going through a period of slight deflation now as a consequences of current credit crunch, iam in the camp that we will see inflation coming back roaring once the world economies turn around.

As a measure of diversification away from paper currencies, and to protect the value of my capital, i recently purchased a small apartment here in vizag ! As i currently live in a rented unit, i thought this is a reasonable place to park some money. So, gang, i was busy with that whole time wasting effort and that’s the reason for my long break from the blogosphere (pretty lame excuse, i agree ). I gotta say, i din’t enjoy the whole process too much. Buying a property is the last thing that excites me in life, but sometimes one needs to attend to least priorities as well. As some readers here know, i don’t formally work now-a-days (by choice ), so i have to atleast try to preserve the value of my capital. I sincerely wish i had deployed my capital into more useful channels but this seemed like the best/quick solution for the time being. I had toyed with some ideas of starting an NGO and using this as seed money for the organization, but i don’t have concrete plans on that right now, so that’s for later.

what’s that energy ?!

As usual, I took a power nap of twenty minutes this afternoon. I make it a point to setup an alarm everyday. It was totally refreshing ! Almost everyday, iam surprised that i had slept for only twenty minutes. It always feels like hours ! I read somewhere that some Japanese companies have quiet and comfortable power nap rooms to refresh the employees. By the way, i think the trick is to make it short like twenty minutes or so. Anything longer might make you feel dull. If you have any research info on this, dear reader, please pass it on. Not in a mood to do anything productive, i then made some coffee and settled down to watch India-Srilanka test match for half an hour. Quite an interesting test series this has been. I then headed off to my music class. I have been trying my hand at keyboard for the last six months, just as a hobby .. and to exercise the “creative” right brain a bit .. and to prevent some of those neurons from rusting off . Part of the inspiration to do music has come from reading the book “Mind and Brain” by Jeff Shwartz. “Use ‘em or Lose ‘em”, “Survival of the busiest” seem to be good rules of thumb about preserving neurons. Iam at a stage where i can play some filmi tunes on keyboard . I’ve never been a music buff, never owned an ipod .. but enjoying playing first hand. Its an interesting experience. After the class, walked back home, and fixed up a quick snack, and headed off to the gym. Had a very good workout, with some fast desi tunes playing in the background. Now, what are those chemicals released when you have a good workout ? Adrenalin , endorphins ? Whatever they are, they seem to have been released more than a fair proportion, because i was sort of on a high much longer after the exercise. Came back home and took a cool shower, and sat down for daily meditation. Iam currently just practicing the most basic concentration exercise, to focus on in-out breath. Its meant to focus the mind, and prepare for further meditation. Anyway, i just couldn’t do it today ! There was too much energy .. too much enthusiasm about life and its possibilities .. too much positivity. I don’t know where it came from .. maybe those endorphin’s from exercise. I decided not to fight it too much, and just called the meditation off for the day.

If you’ve come so far in the post, great ! you are endowed with lot of patience ! If you’r wondering if there’s some point to this post, iam sorry to disappoint you . As the blog so far has been too serious, too many funda’s .. i felt it would be nice to put out some truly raw data out there ! The 1’s and 0’s of an evening in my life

Iam still around, Gang ..

.. but not much to say really. So, i’ll just leave a short note on what i’ve been upto recently. The flavor of the season is “vipassana meditation”. When you try to understand the rationale behind this form of meditation, you will inevitably come across at least the basics of Buddhist philosophy. Two books have really helped me understand the underlying philosophy, and a bit of the technique itself so that i can get started on my own before i learn it more formally — “Mindfulness in plain english“, by Henepola Gunaratana ; “Vipassana meditation as taught of S.N.Goenka” by William Hart. Iam very impressed by the Buddhist philosophy, because of its conciseness and as its intensely logical nature. But, as its often said, there’s only so much use reading “swimology”. For the actual swimming, iam devoting couple of hours per day for now. I definitely plan to make this a permanent fixture on the daily menu, rather than passing flavor of the season.

My plans

I’ve been putting some thought recently on my future plans … To give the context, i’am currently on a rather long break from work, in “independent-study” mode. Just read whatever interests you at the moment .. and if nothing does on a particular day, just go for a walk on the beach or a hike on one of the hills nearby. Full day at ones disposal. I love it

I wasn’t just lazing around though .. my efforts have some sort of focus (as one can hopefully make out from this blog) around environmental issues. I’ve enjoyed this mode of work greatly (it fits my personality), and still do, but i started wondering recently if i should try out more formal work .. or something different .. to diversify my experience and not stagnate.

So i started googling a bit on whats going on in India on environmental front … trying to get a pulse, if you will. Interestingly, just browsing around has brought a great deal of clarity on where my efforts of recent past fit in , and where my future interest might lie. First, where i’ve clearly not been engaged in. Let me call it a top-down approach — this would focus on environmental legislation / implementation of laws / monitoring / filing public-interest-litigations etc. An active issue-based putting-off-the-fires approach. This involves more-or-less working within the current political-economic system, and accepting some of the assumptions that support the system.

I realized i’ve instinctively gravitated to bottom-up topics — questions that address the systemic / philosophical aspects of environmental issues. Stuff like:

- What is the level of environmental awareness of the people, especially in urban areas. What does “environment” mean to them ? (For example, for my local municipality of vizag, it appears that “green” means having well watered lawns on road dividers, while gorgeous lush-green hills on the outskirts of town are being razed for all kinds of activity from real-estate to “IT parks”).

- What has contributed to the lack of environmental consciousness ? What is the role of agriculture, which enabled building up of cities and distancing people from ecological foundations.

- What are processes that are feeding on this lack of awareness ? Globalized economy ? — which conveniently distances important players from consequences of destructive economic activity ? Can a modern industrial global economy really co-exist with the goal of environmental health ?

- Where does the question of evolution fit in ? Has the technological society anyway furthered the process of evolution, as some people argue ? Could there be more ecologically harmonious paths ?

- Can environmental issues be seen in a larger context of the setup of our consciousness. In the sense, does our structure of consciousness limit our sensitivity towards the environment, other species, infact other people. Here comes the question of subject – object dichotomy. The subject being the conscious individual being and object being everything around. The relevance of Yoga philosophy to environmental (and infact social) issues comes here.

Huge questions, i know. For which, i won’t claim to know answers to. They may sound very theoretical, but i think these are the depths we need to go into, to have any chance of decent environmental health. I doubt that fire-fighting by a few committed people has enough force behind it to counter the juggernaut of economic-activity-as-we-know-it. The forces of consumption-driven-growth are so strong today and are being unleashed even more at a rapid pace, without even a pause to consider the long term ramifications.

Iam in no way disparaging the efforts of people who are working within the assumptions of the current system. They are necessary short term measures. Infact, i realize its much more hardwork than just floating alternative utopias on paper. For a real solution though, i believe we need to address tougher questions.

Anyway, back to the topic, iam weighing a few options on my future course, one of which is to spend an year to meet lots of people around the country — from NGO’s involved in dealing with specific issues, to scientists, to industry, to policy people, to man-on-the-street — just to get a 360 degree perspective. If all goes well, and if there’s enough material, put up some experiences on the blog. Needless to say, i think this would be a fantastic learning opportunity, and would mean coming out of my comfort zone of doing all the thinking by-myself from one location.

We’ll see how it goes … Meanwhile, the floor is open for comments on anything .. the blog .. my style of thinking .. my blind spots (?) .. ideas .. opportunities to learn .. anything of relevance.