The capacity to notoriety of work

Why is it considered OK to flaunt hard work? Will there come a time when it might be more prudent to mask long hours of work behind a finished product and instead behave as if the object was conceived with less work and more skill and intelligence?

Is it because hard work is considered a fundamental opportunity given all humankind?

But just the possession of will and spirit deep within doesn't mean it has to be used, to be exhausted in the pursuit of success, albeit its exhaustion be accompanied with praise. Why is that praise justified?

"He worked hard and long, I worked not half-as-hard and not for half-as-long, and I give you something better": With this example in mind, is hard work considered a nullifier, a currency that translates all forms of luck, ill-luck, opportunity and accident into the form of perspiration and blood? Why should it be?

Moreover, the tendency exists, too, that recognizes, nay, yearns that, the capacity for honest work is somehow more innate than the capacity to fool, trick, spy on, defame, slander, and kill, that honest work is more human than the capacity for all these traits.

Is it really?

Who deigned that work would be that nullifier, a currency, and not intelligence? Is hard-work "more" fundamental than intelligence? Why is the flaunting of intelligence considered impudent while the flaunting of work a sign of the presence of humility? Is the capacity for work less volatile than the capacity to think smart? Is one acquired and the other only delivered at the time of birth?

Will a day come when the flaunting of hard-work is considered a sign of impudence and the flaunting of intelligence a sign of the presence of humility? Or - alas! - is it the implied notion of superiority that so scares us, that keeps us from acknowledging publicly that superior intelligence does imply a form of success, perhaps similar to the success implied by the capacity to work hard?

What sacrifice does one represent that the other, seemingly, rejects? Why does only intelligence suffer the curse of bigotry while honest work retains the privilege to socially unfettered use?

The Outsider

The notion of space as identity is not new. Cultural identity, more than anything else, is signified by one’s sense of space and the kind of that space available at one’s location of habitation. However, as the amount of space available is reduced, there are two consequences: we end up sharing space with someone else or partake of someone else’s space, and our association with the space changes to reflect the loss or gain of space.

For instance, having a small room to myself can impart a sense of coziness, and give rise to a definite topology of privacy and freedom. I know where my computer is, where my window is, where my bed is, how I need to position myself to be most comfortable whilst using any of them. Most of all, however, I am familiar with the spatial resources I can use and how.

In this regard, spaces are like words of a language. If a person is feeling a particular emotion but does not know the word that encapsulates the idea of that emotion, then the sentiment’s articulation is impossible. Without articulation, understanding remains incomplete. Similarly, without access to a certain kind of space, the actions encapsulated by the utilization of that space remain non-existent.

Overall, such arguments are applicable directly to physical locations. Visiting a spacious coffee shop evokes a sense of peace and placidity: I can have my coffee in silence, perhaps in accompaniment with light conversation with a friend if he’s present, and I can think with the promise of limited interruptions. Now, assume that one such spacious coffee shop has 20 visitors at a particular point, and then reduce the amount of space available by about half. Suddenly, the sense of placidity is lost, but that’s obvious because space-sharing can only mean the loss of individual freedom.

At the same time, each person becomes more aware of the other’s actions and posture: what he’s doing and what she’s saying matter more because of the probability that we’ll have to partake of the consequences. As the amount of “personal” space that is available is pushed to zero – i.e., if the room is crowded – then the probability of partaking in consequences approaches its degenerate form: the enforcement of participation. Now, I have to do what the guy next to me is doing. If he’s dancing, I dance; if he’s singing, I sing; if he’s drinking, I drink.

As a two-person system, this makes no sense, but in a room full of people, behaviours become immediately transferrable. And if someone remains in a position to subsidize one behaviour more than the rest, then that someone comes into a position to sponsor (and sustain) addiction.

If such an establishment becomes an active part of a certain way of life – and also fosters a sense of community – then it acts like a hub of social networking. The evolution into a hub happens quickly because of the way they operate: unlike advertisements, which are hinged upon the effectiveness of their influence on perceptions, the hubs are in a position to actively modify those perceptions according to some other need. By facilitating behavioural transactions, space-sharing becomes more tolerable because, for one, I’m influenced by the guy next to me and therefore make him more willing to share his space, and for another, I influence him in return and in the process acclimatize myself to his company.

By extension, the more a space gets crowded, the more moral looseness (in a conservative sense) becomes practicable. However, at the same time, the refusal to participate in the activities engendered by such a space leaves one out of the larger loop of things. Extant behavioural patterns become lost to the outsider, leaving him socially awkward and engaging with a significantly different way of life, the significance having arisen out of the persistence of the older/unmodified way of life.

Cities of the future

An article titled 'What If There Were Another Technologically Advanced Species?' appeared on LiveScience on January 20, which spoke about how two intelligent species would coexist on the same planet. The article assumed that one of the species to be human for arguments' sake, and charted out, albeit superficially, how their culture would shape up in the presence of another species.

The article was fascinating for two reasons. The first reason is a not-so-important one: that LiveScience picked such a curious topic to write about. The second reason is that this clash of civilizations can be envisaged not only as a clash of two cultures but, by extension, also as a clash of two political states. Because the author, Natalie Wolchover, mentions in the article that conflicts arise when resources and/or ideologies are matters of contention between two factions, why not attempt to understand what might happen at the interface of conflict of two cities?

William Harcourt-Smith, whose opinions on the subject have been solicited in the article, says that the most likely outcome of an encounter is armed conflict. And if one of the two sides is stronger in anyway than the other, the latter will be eventually thoroughly defeated. However, if after years of internecine of warfare, no side has emerged victorious, they either start to populate geographically different parts of the planet or adapt to consume different resources - like what happened with the Darwin's finches and their beaks.

[caption id="attachment_21359" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="The beaks of Darwin's finches"][/caption]

Cities as today's centres of development are expanding at sprightly rates, especially at their peripheries, where they "acquire" land around them during the urbanization process. They attract investments, they sustain development by providing opportunities for growth, and they consume resources whose value originates from the people inhabiting the cities. With this picture in mind, it is not hard to imagine a time in the future when some cities have grown so massive that, apart from being political and military powerhouses, they could get in the way of development of another such supercity.

And when two supercities clash, they could closely resemble the clash between two intelligent civilizations. Assuming that each city wants different resources, according to Harcourt-Smith, the cities will ignore each other as long as they're not competing for the same thing. In reality, however, all cities have many things in common, such as water, food and electricity. So if one city treads on the toes of a second, then the pressure on existing water-related infrastructure will force conflict, for example.



At the same time, if there is abundant water, food, electricity and other amenities available, and if we posit a significant difference in the cultures of the two cities, how would the outcomes chart out? Will one city's "essence" percolate into the other, like a cultural invasion, until the other's culture becomes highly localized? Will the tendency to ignore persist such that, over time, two distinct sub-species of humans exist? Will the cost of conflict deter cities from expanding to that extent at all and keep them bound to a well-defined region?

I seemed to have assumed, subconsciously, that cities will be allowed to grow and operate freely without the intervention of the state governments. This is not the case... presently. There have been policy-makers and academics in the past who have advocated for a city free of larger political intervention, and even though that's obviously a long way off, it's an idea that has a good chance of becoming real sometime within the next few centuries.

When a certain sphere paid a visit

On September 27, 2011, when an innocuous neutrino started its short journey from the Large Hadron Collider in CERN on the Franco-Swiss border, the world rested comfortably on the shoulders of a certain Albert Einstein. The Universe tottered on the verge of becoming completely explicable, string theorists were retreating into the shadows whence they had come, and particle physicists did what they always have done: relax and wait for more results to prove them more right.

That neutrino proved them wrong. Even though all it did was beat a ray of light by 60 nanoseconds, it had managed to defy a lifetime’s work in physics by a physicist everyone considered the greatest of all time. By travelling faster than light, it had utterly disproved the monumental theory of relativity. Suddenly, things began to turn around: the Universe was suddenly shrouded in mystery, the space-time continuum was being re-examined, particle physicists began to doubt their education… and the string theorist was suddenly in the limelight.

What does this have to do with a book on Victorian sociology? Almost everything. Rewind back to 1884, when the schoolmaster of the small Philological School in Marylebone, Edwin Abbott Abbott, published a novella called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. The book was about a fictitious world inhabited by two-dimensional people, rather two-dimensional shapes that represented people: women were straight lines and men were polygons. It was a satire that mocked the Victorian way of life. Women were line-segments and therefore essentially one-dimensional, as was reflected by the limited roles they were allowed to play in the society. Men, on the other hand, had many sides to them, and therefore dominated the two-dimensional world.

[caption id="attachment_20765" align="aligncenter" width="370" caption="Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, 1884"][/caption]

When, one day, a nameless sphere decides to pay a visit to the narrator, a humble square, it is unable to convince him of the existence of the third dimension. However, after the square is chosen as an apostle to taken to Spaceland, the three-dimensional world, he is convinced that solids exist. Upon his return, again, he is condemned in Flatland as a madman and nobody is inclined to take him seriously.

The book is a powerful allegory in that it describes with an oft-sardonic mathematical simplicity the plight of those who perpetuate prejudices and yet suffer from the prejudice of others. The plot itself is linear, unassuming and provides the reader with no distractions but only the thrill of a Kafkaesque fantasy. The nameless sphere and his divine visitations, the humble square and his naïve suppositions, even the monarch of Pointland and his solipsistic musings – all touch close to the everyman’s experiences.

In fact, were Flatland to be mired in reality at the outset by the author himself, the book would long have lost its charmingly experimental texture, condemned to spend its life like its narrator did. No; in being the only known work of mathematical fiction, the book has managed to survive more than a century of tireless scrutiny by portraying itself as an examination of dimensions and nothing more.

While Abbott himself could not have imagined its scope when he wrote it, the morals of Flatland were soon found to be applicable in a variety of settings, including those of the string theorist. Imagine his plight as he attempted desperately to convince his colleagues of the existence of 10, 18, even 23 dimensions, but failed miserably each time. Imagine, then, his exclamation when a certain sphere paid the particle physicists a visit.

It is not known whether Abbott was writing as a historian or as a misogynist: both roles become evident in the literature as the realm’s women, being lines, have to survive many ignominies, some metaphorical, some plainly derisive, to coexist with the freer men. However, such analyses can today safely be sidelined: Abbott’s views on feminism are hardly considered as such, whereas his prophetic insight into the role of time as a fourth dimension was considered by Einstein himself to be an inspiration. And to think the book that spelled the rise of the particle physicist also has come to spell the rise of the string theorist!

An exploration of Tormont: Episode I

When I finally awakened from my drug-induced stupor, the first things I noticed were the Adenacra Globules, the nearest a mere mile from the high balcony we were all lined up in. The massive sphere, almost a mile in diameter, was already being caressed by two, three probing tentacles, each long and spindly arm culminating with what I could only say was a powerful spark plug. Having been a matter of legend for all these years, witnessing the gawdy monstrosity from close quarters was a disillusional experience—for one, it meant that divinity was no longer just the content of contentious debates; for another, it meant that we were looking at history with irreversibly wrong perspectives. One way or another, on that day, I became the prisoner I am still, and over the course of these months, it has become an uncharacteristically easy choice between asserting my existence as a Senator of Sepulchra, where I am from, against asserting my liberation from its ideological throes by "getting distilled into a higher plane", as it were. I now serve in Heaven, and I do not lament the loss of kingship.

The Adenacra Globule C-3144K—named for its size (C), cardinality (3144) and function (K)—was responsible for a small star-system in the Japonica Drift, and even as we watched, a fourth tentacle unattached itself from the spine-mounted quiver and extended itself to the shimmering blue surface. A Tormontell—a race of people we had known earlier by the more ubiquitous name of "Gods"—archiver stood before us, a little under 12-feet tall, surveying the array before his/her eyes (we had no way to tell the men from the women), his/her coal-black eyes hidden behind taut epicanthal folds, dull grey hair cascading down his/her shoulders. I could tell he/she was an archiver by the flowing mud-brown ropes he/she was garbed in, trapped gently around the waist by a broad probably-wooden belt-band.

It was raining on Tormont.