The Fallacy of Free Speech

People play games. Everyone does. I don’t think there is any person who doesn’t play games. Because it’s all relative. You may not play games as much as the next person on one thing, but you probably do in another. I think over time we realize that it’s necessary to play games to protect our selves. Because if you are completely open about what you really think or want, chances are that someone is going to walk all over you. It’s just become the way things are.

Business is a game. Sales is a game. Relationships are a game. You posture one way or the other in order to try and get the desired result. My cousin was stressing most of the day because she wanted this guy to call her. But of course she couldn’t call him. And likewise… if you make the first move, you’re implicitly losing the power struggle. Right?

That is how things are. I accept that. But doesn’t mean I have to like it. I would so much prefer to be able to be in a position to say this is what I think, this is what I want without having to worry about what people think, what it does to my competitive position, what it does for my emotional exposure – so there really is no such thing as Free Speech. Yes, you are physically free to say what you want, but you are intellectually, emotionally and rationally bound by your own mind to never be able to practice Free Speech.

On Jay Leno / Conan (one of those late night shows) every once in a while, there is a segment which says “What they’re really thinking?” or something similar. That would be both wonderfully amazing and scary at the same time, if you had the ability to really know what people are thinking behind their actions and their words… the whole truth and nothing but the truth… for once.

Five-year Plans and Change

When I was in highschool some of the subjects I hated were History and Social Sciences (Civics). One of the things that we were made to learn as part of the curriculum was that after independence in 1947, one of the things India adopted was a series of five year plans in order to help outline the development of the country. We had to learn the key milestones for each five-year plan.

Well, recently – and I forget who reminded me of this – it was probably Varun - that I seem to be operating in five-year plan mode. I spent five years at Carnegie Mellon. I’ve now spent five years running companies. And I think what that tells me is that it’s time for a change. And time for me to start thinking about the next five year plan. Now, it would be too presumptuous of me to actually map out anything beyond five years… because that would be assuming things and assumption is the mother of all fuckups. I’m definitely a subscriber of (or at least trying to be) the micro-economics saying that my professor in undergrad would keep repeating in order to drive the point home – “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

So all my planning and all the markers I decide to set must fit into the time frame of a five year plan. I think I’ve figured out what I want to do for the next stretch, but unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to go into that just yet. In another couple of months I’ll be able to talk about it some more.

The bar has been raised. The marker has been set.

Raising the bar...

Several weeks ago, someone asked me: "Why do you keep raising the bar?" And I didn't have an answer. I just felt I had to do it. I didn't know for what. I didn't know what the heck it was that drives some of us to never be satisfied. Enough is never enough. There is always more. There is always better. And along with it there is always this sense of failure. This sense of inadequacy.

I didn't know how to answer that question. Because rationally I could see the argument aht we are our own worst enemy as we are never satisfied with what we've done or what we can do because as soon as we've done it, we start thinking that whatever we've achieved is not enough and eventually make ourselves miserable all over again. But as I've mulled over this question now for several weeks and seen myself push things to the limit, I think I may have an answer to why we do it... or at least to why *I* do it.

Victor Frankl in his book, Man's Search for Meaning made several astute observations. You'll find a whole lot of them documented in the Eavesdropped! section. One of the key observation he made was: "It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future -- sub specie aeterniatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task."

What Victor Frankl said is basically that the reason why we raise the bar is because we need something to look forward too. It is part of our search for meaning. It's the need to have markers which when we cross we can say we got there. It is something to keep us from thinking about the futility and pointlessness of life otherwise in the absence of these markers. It's our reason. And yes, though we may make things difficlut for ourselves by moving the end marker up each time... we do it so that we can keep going.

I had to create my own new marker. I needed a new marker. And hence I had to raise the bar. I just don't know how to do it any other way. And if someone does, I wish I could learn from them. because otherwise there is no rest.

Transactional Integrity

So I was hesitant to write this blog since it provides evidence of my geek-roots. But Kiwi's have a tendency to alleviate the hesitation. When I took Distributed Systems at CMU one of the things that we learnt was transactional-integrity - i.e. maintaining the ACID properties for transactions. Where ACID is Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable. And one approach to do this for distributed transactions is to use two-phase commits (a little bilt too much to explain in this blog, for those of you who know what the heck I'm talking about, good for you. For others, it doesn't really matter, because the geeky part is not the point).

I think I took transactional integrity a step too far. At the time I thought this is cool... I can apply this to everyday stuff. And so I became anal. Very anal. Everything had to be done the right way or else it wasn't satisfactory. Every email I received, had to be answered, because it was a transaction and it had to be processed as per the laws of transactional-integrity. And because of it, even till today I not only answer every "directed" email addressed to me, but I also expect a response to every directed email I send out (directed as opposed to mass). And it's not only email it's everything. Every thing is a transaction. It must be "closed out" in order for it to be complete and to get taken off the stack.

But sometimes the stack gets overwhelming. There is too much going on. Too many open issues. Too many transactions. Too many things that I just want to get away from them for a little bit. But if I get away I'm afraid I'll leave things undone -- leave some transaction un-committed. And they will get lost in the ether of my desire to let them go. In a way this craxy thing of applying transactional logic to every day things is good since it makes sure that things get done. On the other hand it drives me nuts to not be able to let go of stuff every once in a while.

Lately, I've been consciously trying to not get myself involved so deeply so as to claim ownership. Because if I do get that deeply involved, the control-freak in me surfaces in order to try and make sure that everything gets done the way it is supposed to be done and no less.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure no one knows what the heck I'm talkinging about here so I may as well shut the hell up.