March 2023
It's time to talk
I’m back. Bet you weren’t expecting that. Well then again, it’s been the year for the unexpected. A couple of weeks back, Americans and Europeans woke up to find out that the money they have in banks may not actually be there. Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a treaty brokered by guess who, China. Saudi Arabia is working on restoring relations with Syria with the help of Putin. Rahul Gandhi was disqualified from Lok Sabha for a garden variety taunt said during an election campaign. There are strong rumors that Trump, who is leading in the Republican polls,, may be indicted on a low-level technicality. An Asian actor won the Oscar for Best Actress. The latest version of Artificial Intelligence software is out there. It promises nothing short of a revolution if it’s allowed to realize its potential and put millions out of jobs. None of these were expected. Every one of them has the potential to change the world in some irrevocable manner.
There is a lot going on. It’s getting harder and harder to make sense of it all. Are we really at the point where we are seeing the beginning of the end of the US dollar dominance? Is India really headed towards an authoritarian, majoritarian future? What is China up to? Wasn’t Putin supposed to be dead by now? When is Shah Rukh Khan planning to retire?
One thing seems clear. The Second Cold War has started. The world is about to divide itself into American and Chinese camps, and we’re starting to see some early alignments. The last time a Cold War happened, it was said that Japan won. This time, it feels like India’s turn. How India reacts to the geopolitical shifts and aligns itself will be key.
Two big questions are increasingly coming to the fore.
The first is epistemological. The question essentially boils down to, “what is knowledge?”. It’s an ancient question. We are asking this today in various forms. When we second guess scientists on the efficacy of vaccines, we are asking it. When we roll our eyes at mainstream media, this is the question in the back of our minds. What is knowledge? What are facts? Who is in possession of them? Ironically, there has never been a better time to be well informed. The world’s best books, greatest minds and largest libraries are but a click away. And yet, we are at loggerheads with each other on the most basic of questions. The earth is, of course, flat. Right? Perhaps that is why we are at loggerheads. The abundance in the supply of facts is breeding contempt for them. There is too much supply, and the value of knowledge has dropped dramatically.
Knowledge is tricky business. It’s processed by the mind and held in memory. These are notoriously unreliable organs. Our mind, as we know, can play tricks on us. What is opinion? What is knowledge? Can we really separate the two?
Another aspect of knowledge is that it is limited. It may feel like we have learnt a lot in the last 100 or 200 years. But then, what we don’t know far outweighs what we know. When we are dealing with such small percentages, it’s hard to say if we have made meaningful progress or if these are blips in measurements.
When we know very little, it is hard to maintain the confidence of a large population of people in a democracy. This is why we never have had democracies for most of our history. When no one knows much, the best way to rule is by the sword. Might has been right for thousands of years.
When Covid happened and they asked us to wash our hands six times a day and wear masks, the truth is no one really knew if it would work. The guidance came from a place of “let’s try this and hope it works.” A lot of times that is how knowledge is accumulated. We get ourselves in jams and we try a few things and we make discoveries. We can’t really expect scientists and lab technicians to be experts before they have discovered things. The issue is we portrayed them as experts who knew it all. “I am going with science. You’re an idiot if you don’t.” The other side retorted, “I don’t think those guys know anything.” We should have really been telling each other, “Look, we are in trouble. We don’t know what is going on. We’ve got elderly folks and folks who are immuno-compromised among us. Can we not take chances, please?” Instead, we turned on each other.
The second question that is popping up more and more is financial. The question is “what is money?” I suspect that this has never been answered over the centuries mainly because there has never been a good answer. The plain truth is although we might think of money as something tangible like a green colored US dollar bill, it is really a confidence game at the end of the day. Banks are the institutions we have created to provide an aura of confidence. As it turns out, there are several types of monies each with varying levels of confidence. The dollar bill in your pocket breeds the highest confidence because it exists. Everyone sees it and when you offer it, they honor it. Then there is the money in the bank. Some of your bank balance is real in the sense the bank may have it. Someone has seen it and they reported back to us that it exists. The rest of your money has been given away by the banks as loans. This is how banks make money. They take our money and give it to others. That is not the issue.
The issue is the banks don’t themselves know where the money is or if it will come back someday. If all of us decide to ask for our money at the same time, there is a very good chance none of us are getting our money back. What would cause all of us to ask for our money back at the same time? Like I said, this is a confidence game. We will ask for it back the day we all collectively lose confidence in what is going on.
This goes back to question number one. What are facts? Is the bank balance that I see when I open up the Bank of America app on my iPhone a fact? Or is it merely a notional idea of what may or not be there?
There was once a guy named Erwin Schrodinger, a German quantum physicist who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. He posited that all of matter can only be described using “wave functions.” Translating to English, what he meant was that nothing really exists in a material tangible sense UNTIL it is observed. If it is not observed, a thing exists only as a possibility, best described by a mathematical equation. Is it here? Is it there? Who knows what it is or where it is until we see it. That may just be the case with the money in our bank accounts. It may be there. It may not be there. If we all feel an overpowering urge to observe it at the same time, chances are it won’t exist even if it did previously. I wonder where Schrodinger kept his money..
Running countries is all about running all sorts of confidence games. The guys and gals with the best hair and stories win elections and get to run the show. The stories they are telling us these days are not exactly breeding confidence. Biden tells me that a war in Ukraine is good for America. Yellen tells me that the banks are safe. Modi tells me that disqualifying an Opposition party leader is good for India. Putin and Xi are telling me that the end of American dominance is good for the world. Shah Rukh Khan is telling me… I don’t know what he is trying to tell me.
I am an optimist by nature. By optimist, I mean: If things can go wrong, I fully expect they will. But I will ALWAYS believe (this is where my optimism kicks in) that I WILL find my way out of it.
As I look to the future, I must admit there are days I feel like we won’t be able to find our way out of this. But I am reminded of an enduring quality we humans possess. We love great stories. We love to be inspired. We love to be loved. We will find people who love us. We will find those who can inspire and lead us. They will help us find our way out of this. This I believe.
Have a great week ahead.