Middle-class morality, content neutral robots and Love

A philosophy where there are a fixed set of rules which clearly demarcate right and wrong, and those who either disobey any of these rules or are from a background sufficiently different (which makes them possibly have different values from the society in question) irrespective of whether they try to fit in to the society are shunned or considered inferior, depending on how different they are. Right and wrong are decided by the society at large and individual opinions are not entertained (unless the individual is very rich, and in that case people will at least act like they listen to him). Well, Nazism was at least more forthright when it came to what it preached. Maybe middle-class morality is just a milder version of Nazism.

Before I start out, I want to clarify - Do I hate middle-class morality? Yes. Why? Because it stands in the way of truth. Why do I care about truth more? Because the material gains from middle-class morality- the money, the friends, the security are all aimed at satisfying the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy- a part which is already more or less satisfied in me.

All of us have read about middle-class morality. It's what the rich and poor do not have. It's this set of values which exist due to some reason, which have to be followed in society. But why? It's possible that the only purpose of middle-class morality is to make the middle-class people richer than they are. But the thing about MCM (abbreviation for middle-class morality henceforth) is that it never lets you be happy. It doesn't let you be content with what you have. And that's because any hint of satisfaction or intrinsic happiness will prevent you from earning more and spoiling your children with gifts. And once indoctrinated completely, its difficult to break free of MCM and consider personal values or morals. Coming back to the purpose of MCM- the summary of how MCM works is this : (the first para kind of outlined the effects of this working) People live by rules set by the society. That doesn't sound too bad right? And the set of rules are more or less consistent across the world at an elemental level. For instance, you have to be polite to everyone you meet, or you have to study hard get good marks and marry an have children. Of course in some countries people are more individualistic or just have enough money to not care about these things and thus in the US or Europe you may not find as many people following MCM as in India. Now, these rules are aimed at letting you reliably access the wealth of the rich, with minimal risk. Study (education is good, but when it's purely aimed at getting reliable employment- MCM is responsible for that) -> Get a good paying job (pretty much the most important part of MCM's objectives) -> have a large number of acquaintances and a just a handful to zero friends (large number of acquaintances with whom you never really speak honestly even if you hate them - MCM wants to utilise these people when you are in need and allow limited utilisation vice versa as well. Having good manners, being smart and talkative etc. let you achieve this goal) -> Have children (this is again very important- since you lived your entire life according to MCM and basically did very little for yourself, mostly choosing arbitrary things such as the food you like and the movies u want to see and the like. Having children let's you focus your efforts away from yourself again. You now have to work towards making your children happy. Or else, the society will shun you and kick you out - without telling you of course; MCM does everything discreetly. ) -> Die.

My suggested alternative is : Live - > Do whatever you want -> Die. It's admittedly not as elaborate as MCM's plan - I devised it in 10 seconds (as opposed to the millenia which very slowly shaped MCM, while keeping the underlying principles same). Also, my alternative doesn't guarantee anything- you might end up being very poor and find no meaning in life. But it might lead to something very special. You might fall in love with life and everyone in it. It's kind of like setting your adolescent child free and letting him do what he wants. He might get fucked up but then he might do something fantastic as well. The same with MCM - if you set a person free from it.

Let's look at each phase- The studying and getting a good job part is pretty straightforward. In the sense that, there's nothing too middle-classy about it. And it's difficult to question the morality of it was well. Of course, the rich may let their kids do what the want and this might result in them starting their own ventures (where the middle class eventually get employed. But in a place like India, even entrepreneurship requires you to graduate from an IIT (it's not mandatory but it helps immensely in getting attention and funding) and so you can't really question this part. Unless you're a gifted footballer or musician or something. Or you want to waste away your life. Maybe it's the middle class moralist inside me taking over. Let me come back to the point- Next thing in line after getting a job is to have excellent social standing. Now, ideally your parents would've set you on track to be a social butterfly from a young age- else it's a little hard work after becoming an adult but hardly difficult. You need to now do basically what everyone does. Watch movies in the local language, eat what they eat, (When in Rome, do what the Romans do if you want to be part of their middle class- goes the wise old saying) and make yourself a review and opinion aggregator. You shouldn't really have any strong opinion on anything since it might hurt others.

Perhaps a second objective of MCM, now that I think of it, especially in India - is to have an old age where your children take care of you. In another country, this objective might be slightly differently defined as a happy old age where you have enough resources- and this might be a subset of being sufficiently rich in the first place, and thus may not warrant a definition separate from the first objective. And in a country where it is difficult to do business, the rich tend to get richer and the poor, poorer. Similarly, money tends to remain with the older people quite a bit as compared to more entrepreneurial economies where the young can start ventures and make money out of the merit of the ventures. Having an economy where the older people are more powerful has a definite impact on morality in a society- it is a relatively pessimistic point of view which gives more importance to money, fame and being 'settled', without taking much risk.

Let me digress a bit and talk about robots. So, Microsoft launched its 'teen girl' robot on Twitter called Tay, who can learn language and understand ideas based on what people tweet to it. Soon after, Microsoft had to take it down since she was turned into a Nazi-loving, racist and highly sexual creature with no regard for humanity. The whole episode reminds me of how people are more or less what society makes them to be. And the only difference between the average person in the society and you, is your personal values. If you don't have any personal values that stand out- you can be turned into things as evil as the Nazis or ISIS supporters and you wouldn't even know it.

Coming back to MCM to make one last point- people put a huge amount of importance on how the society perceives them. They have essentially no opinion of theirs which is truly their own, regarding anything. People pitch ideas to each other and reach a consensus on what is popularly liked. Things like MCM and general stupidity on this planet cause movies like Batman vs Superman to have a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 7.7 on IMDB. "The previous Batman movie- I think it was called the Dark Night, that was so cool. This one's not that great you know but not so bad either". I digress.

So what's wrong with a society filled with average people, some more average than others and the different ones living in shame at not being average enough? A lot of things, and as I'd pointed out earlier, anything above the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which are not representative of the absolute truth of course, but fairly accurate in my opinion) is beyond the reach of MCM. But for me personally there are two very specific issues I have with MCM- One is that I cannot deal with fake shit. Fake manners, lies, talking behind people's back etc. The second and far more important thing is how MCM prevents people from truly falling in love. MCM imposes a set of expectations on your partner which are centred around what the society expects from an average person. It makes you and your partner average, alas but love is when you find the best person in the world. There is no love in loving a person more average than most- a shallow being with no individuality. And a person who is completely independent of idiotic societies for her self-esteem, and having original ideas; the confidence to stand up for herself and her people when it counts without worrying about 'what others would say' is the only kind of person I can even think of falling in love with. And for movie lovers, the trade-off between the comforts of middle-class life and it's reliability as opposed to wild and unhibited love is best portrayed in Vicky Cristina Barcelona- where Vicky falls in love with the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, over the her well-paid and well-settled American fiance, and in Before Sunset where Jesse falls in love with the French girl Celine, over his well-settled and well-paid American wife.

'Boring' Blogs, self-critique and truth

I got an interesting response to sharing the blog on FB. It received literally 0 comments on FB and all suggestions (quite a few of them) and appreciations came via Whatsapp/Facebook Chat. The current post is a slightly narcissistic one which will talk about the blog itself and other blogs like it, partly based on the reaction that the previous post on FB created. But first, let me digress.

I've been considering moving to another country for some time now and have been confused between quite a few countries - USA, Europe (I know it's not a country, thanks), Canada and Australia permanently. And being very risk averse, I don't want to rush into the decision only to regret it later on. I've grown up watching American cartoons and TV shows (Cartoon Network and Nick) as well as sports (NBA, NHL,MLB and the terrible MLS) and thus can relate quite a bit to American culture as compared to say the Australian or French cultures. America is also naturally supportive of immigrants unlike Europe - and decidedly much cooler than Australia (which has it's share of immigrant hatred) and Canada.

But then you've all the problems in America- some conspiracy theories, some facts- and for me, none more staggering than the NSA's violation of all kinds of personal privacy of not just American, but citizens of several countries across the world. Then there's criticism of how America tries to bully other countries through war, diplomacy etc. and also criticism of the American corporate culture which focuses on results without much importance given to methods. However, societies which receive the most criticism might be the best and no the worst, especially when most of the criticism is from the inside, as is the case in America. It's not that Australian or Canadian spy agencies are less intrusive or that their corporates are less cut-throat . The main difference here is that American society is a freer society with more information flowing through media and having people who are more pro-active in criticising themselves. A couple of examples to illustrate this- one being the difference in bad loans reported in India and China (India has a much higher figure in % terms, but is considered safer since the Indian classification of bad loans is considered more honest and transparent). Another recent influence for thinking along these lines was the massive self-critique the feminist movement does, of itself and how they are proud of it.

Now, we love to be correct all the time and don't like to be questioned much (myself included, to an extent). It's only the highly scientific thinkers who insist on knowing the absolute truth and thus wish to be questioned on everything (myself included here too, to an extent). All of us have questions, doubts and weaknesses but we hate to admit them. Most of us get depressed, have anxieties and face extreme isolation at some point in our life - but we shrug it off as a weakness and do not wish to talk about such feelings even with close friends, let alone approach counselors. We would rather talk about Cricket (that T-20 match between Indian and Pakistan which India won so comprehensively let's you make fun of Pakistan along with your friends and makes you feel good.) or Bollywood or local events and traffic and weather and work rather than the things that actually mean something to us - such as fear or ambition or love, especially with acquaintances. But why? Is it mainly because one is shamed of these things, thinking that only he/she faces these problems? In my opinion, no. It's more about us being afraid that others have different opinions. And, in things like cricket - you have more or less facts and numbers to look at, and so when someone says that Kohli played a great innings yesterday or that he's a great batsman, you normally have the numbers to back your statement. The risk of being wrong is minimal. Of course, you have interesting conversations about the team spirit of a captain allowing his player to score a double hundred at the cost of a late declaration and so on- but arguments on both sides here are backed up by facts too, with relatively more opinion but still, nothing much to be scared of. When it comes to Bollywood or other more subjective topics, it's more difficult to back up statements with facts, but facts accompanied and mixed evenly with popular opinion, rumours and urban legend help cement opinions and make people confident about them. There are also well established groups for each opinion - for instance, there are enough Salman lovers and haters (both extremes have become popular opinion) for it to be normal for a person to be in either group.

Now, why do we want conversations which are completely impersonal? Reason one is that we meet a lot of people and need to connect equally with all of them. Common topics help substantially in breaking the ice while meeting new people. This applies to acquaintances as well- you may want to spend time with an acquaintance without actually connecting with them. This could be by going for a road trip or going to a mall or just having a drink with them. I myself try to be good at as many of these common interests as possible, for these same reasons among others. However, having these common interests shouldn't stop one from pursuing interests that make you unique.You shouldn't feel lost in all the madness of trying to blend in, because that it when you lose all individuality. If you feel like not drinking with friends, dont; If you don't like Bollywod movies, don't watch them; and if you love reading scientific journals (for some reason), do that; and if you feel like sleeping the entire weekend, do that as well- as long as you have a plan.

And in societies which have the habit of telling only one side of the story (historically though, we have had truly rich stories in Mahabharata and Ramayana which have had thousands of re-interpretations, some of which go so far as to say Ravana was a hero) the danger is even more. The singular truth these days has been a mixture of hard-work, development and love for the nation. People who don't stand by these artificial 'truths' are considered evil and intolerance is growing if anything. People who have a love for  the actual truth and who criticise the government (or the country- India isn't a perfect country by any means) or social revolutionaries- who help bring about immediate chaos but often sustainable long term growth and prosperity, are questioned. And, since this is the popular opinion, it is very easy to go along with it without criticising because that's the easy thing to do. Now, this is obviously not just happening in India but across the world given the poor economic conditions, and it includes all developed nations as well (Donald Trump  and his support for instance; or in the Middle East (and surprisingly, Japan) where it's very difficult for an accused to get a fair trial)- but most countries thankfully have people who consider 'black and white' morality as a minority.

And in this madness, the only thing I can say and hope for is 'Satyameva Jayate'. I hope the reader values the truth and actively seeks the truth and practices self-criticism whether it's critiquing oneself, one's family or friends or government. I request you that if such writing (mine or otherwise; I write less about society and more about general philosophy) which seeks the truth and appeals to you, to not be ashamed of admitting it either to yourself or to others (irrespective of the caste, wealth and success of the person who preaches it). Remember that Germans once believed as a huge majority in Nazism