Of Doing And Being Done By

Bombay is more polluted than Delhi. I know from the extra black that comes out of my nostrils when I clean them.

Moving on.

How would you react if when you decided the two things you would most like to do with yourself, after years of internal debate, you then realised that your parents are already doing them one each?

In the tradeoff between money, knowledge, and power, supposing an inability to successfully balance all three, I have always liked to believe I will gravitate towards knowledge.

Wealth and power are ways we demonstrate who we are to others. They are our badges or entry tickets, and they are our only way to compare ourselves with those around us, and those whom we long to be.

Of course, one way of looking at knowledge is that it is the agent of this money and power. It is through knowledge that money or power is first earned. My knowledge is then effectively a measure to be judged by where in the sea of society I can propel myself to.

But knowledge cannot be transmitted through generations the way money or power can; we cannot inherit it; we have to go get our own.

I want to say that only knowledge can be a ‘pure’ pursuit, to be acquired for its sake alone, but maybe that’s not true. I know people who sit on their not inconsiderable wealth without spending any of it because the pleasure is derived from having it and not from using it. I have also heard, mostly from history, of those who have used power not for what it would get them. In this too, the three are really more similar than not.

But knowledge is the only one of the three that can be got without anyone else’s tacit acceptance. To have it, I don’t have to rely on you to choose my services or sell me yours. Unlike money or power, my value through knowledge is inherent in me, and not resting in your perceptions of it or me.

What I do now involves disseminating knowledge, of a sort. There is room for analysis and opinion, even. But what sort of knowledge? And to what purpose is it being gained, and spread?

I want to be somewhere that is surrounded by abstract ideas and people that have them. I like talking about how things are, and how we can change them. I love taking tiny little things and putting them in their huge big contexts. I'm fond of taking huge big contexts and seeing how they determine the tiny little things. I enjoy observing how people react to events.

I want to watch the rules of society - whether through economics, politics, or psychology - being made. And perhaps even shape them. What I do now is take the rules as given and play by them. Try as I might, I cannot find it fulfilling enough for me.

So what instead? I think it mostly leaves teaching or writing.

The aggravating thing is that I've been beaten to each by one or the other parent. The only real question that remains now is whether I should join them, or find some other game to play.

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