Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On 7 March 2014 08:42, SS wrote: > On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 11:00 +0530, Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote: > > > > Don't agree with this observation by the Kerala HC, but the article > > below[1] posted by Madhu yesterday on Facebook demonstrates how > > ingrained > > playing as a team is in India. > > > > Kiran > > > > [1] > > > http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/Parents-Have-a-Say-in-Marriage-of-Their-Children-Kerala-HC/2014/03/01/article2083620.ece#.UxVkDvmSx8H > > > Same? Or different? > > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/High-school-girl-who-sued-parents-loses-first-round/articleshow/31511168.cms > > High school girl who sued parents loses first round > Shared this with my wife and as new parents (our daughter is 4 months old), this ruined both our days. *sigh* What surprises and disgusts me is the sense of entitlement that would have motivated a suit like this. Kiran
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 11:00 +0530, Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote: > > Don't agree with this observation by the Kerala HC, but the article > below[1] posted by Madhu yesterday on Facebook demonstrates how > ingrained > playing as a team is in India. > > Kiran > > [1] > http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/Parents-Have-a-Say-in-Marriage-of-Their-Children-Kerala-HC/2014/03/01/article2083620.ece#.UxVkDvmSx8H Same? Or different? http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/High-school-girl-who-sued-parents-loses-first-round/articleshow/31511168.cms High school girl who sued parents loses first round WASHINGTON: Whoever said parenting is a thankless task can cite this as prime evidence. In a case that has caught the even rebels in a litigious society slack-jawed, an 18-year old high-school girl in New Jersey sued her parents to force them to pay for her schooling and living costs after storming out of the home because she didn't want to follow some basic house rules they sought to establish - like helping with chores. Rachel Canning turned up in school uniform for the first day of hearing at a family court, but it didn't go well for her. Judge Peter Bogaard scolded her and lamented the breakdown of the family after reading an expletive-laden message from Rachel to her mother, according to courtside reports. "'Have you ever in your experience seen such gross disrespect for a parent?" he was quoted as saying. "What is the next step ...are we going to open the gates for a 12-year-old to sue for an Xbox, a 13-year-old to sue for an iPhone... what about a 15-year-old asking for a 60 inch TV?" Rachel's parents, Elizabeth and Sean Canning, broke down in court as details of how their family was torn apart were read out. But the high-schooler, on the cusp of going to college, stared ahead without remorse after the judge ruled that the parents did not have to pay her school fees amounting to $5,300 and denied her request for weekly allowance and additional financial support, including attorney fees of $13,000. He delayed a ruling on whether the parents must pay her college tuition from a fund they had set up, while asking lawyers to consider whether it's wise to "establish precedent where parents live in fear of establishing rules of the house." Rachel Canning, from all accounts a bright student who wants to be a bio-medical engineer, says that her parents kicked her out of their home when she turned 18 last October. She has claims her mother called her 'fat' and 'porky,' insults that led her to suffering bulimia. "My parents simply will not help me any longer. They want nothing to do with me and refuse to even help me financially outside the home although they certainly have the ability to do so. ... I am unable to support myself and provide for my food, shelter, clothing, transportation and education," she said in court documents. But her parents say she opted to leave because she didn't want to follow their house rules that included being respectful, keeping a curfew, returning borrowed items to her two sisters, managing a few chores, and reconsidering or ending her relationship with a boyfriend the parents believe is a bad influence. "Private school, new car, college education; that all comes with living under our roof," her father, Sean Canning, a retired police chief of the township where they live, told a local television station. "We're heartbroken, but what do you do when a child says 'I don't want your rules but I want everything under the sun and you to pay for it?'" Canning told the local Daily Record, adding that his daughter's college fund is available to her and not withdrawn or re-allocated, as she has alleged. "We love our child and miss her. It's killing me and my wife. We're not Draconian and now we're getting hauled into court. She's demanding that we pay her bills but she doesn't want to live at home and she's saying, 'I don't want to live under your rules'." Meanwhile, the twitterati has weighed in on the case in what some say amounts to a witchhunt. "Rachel canning is a stupid idiot and her parents should kick her out! she is the daftest person on the planet #meanbiatch," wrote one Twitterer. Another tweeted: "Rachel Canning is giving current teens a bad name, can we just ignore her already so she'll crawl back in the bubble she came out of?" A third warned: Wondering if #RachelCanning realizes that every future prospective employer will Google her. Rachel has reportedly been living with a school friend, whose lawyer father has been helping her with the litigation but not representing her. > >
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mar 4, 2014 5:08 PM, "Deepa Mohan" wrote: > > > > > > > > > A selfish organism is the very definition of cancer. > > > > I'm not sure if I agree with all that you said, Cheeni. But that last > line...breathtaking in its simplicity. Thanks Deepa, you are kind as always. :-)
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
> > > > A selfish organism is the very definition of cancer. > I'm not sure if I agree with all that you said, Cheeni. But that last line...breathtaking in its simplicity.
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 5:08 AM, SS wrote: > The article looks at life like a single player game. Life can be a > single player game or a team game in which multiple players cooperate. > In India life is defined as a multiple player game in which your life is > played in family and society from the day you are born. Life is NOT - never ever a single player optimization game for any living being. This is the law of nature. However the temptation of a selfish life befalls every creature. The stronger they are the harder they fall for it. The team spirit of ants was fabulously documented by Dr. E.O Wilson, the noted naturalist. In one of his examples, the riskiest duty in an ant hill - guarding supply lines always falls on the oldest ants. They embrace certain death in order to be of maximum use to the family. To be selfish cannot easily enter the conception of an ant because to believe so offers no advantages, only downsides. They can't survive without each other, and even then it's a tough life. Their precarious position in the food chain never allows them to forget the dangers of life. Even if a few stupid truants wander off from duty, they never last long on the outside and the contagion doesn't spread. On the other hand, larger animals like male elephants will occasionally wander off alone, fed up with having to put up with the nonsense of the herd. The kids are annoying, there are constant fights between the members, food is scarce and so on. So they succumb to temptation because they can. Nevertheless, this is only initially fun - it soon becomes a miserable existence. They finally return to the herd when they grow calmer and more accepting of the interconnectedness of their life with the rest of the herd for good and bad. Humans are different in that they never seem to learn, they go through cycles of this madness. The modern world clings to an illusion of freedom afforded by temporary surplus riches. Yet this is mass disillusionment where the price for the pursuit of freedom is a lot of traps. Financial traps, loneliness traps, incompatibility traps. Divorce rates are highest in the developed world - http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Divorce-rate If you possess a burning desire to be free, how can you stay married? Life becomes a debt trap of college loans, mortgage and pension funds. All of these were more or less provided for by the ancient family - where the parents taught the children their skills, and housing and old age care was almost always taken for granted. But that doesn't mean the old days were perfect, it never has been. You had no choice of profession, or housing or quality of care. Now, the modern nuclear household people too have no choice but to abandon some new found freedoms and band together, to create the socialist nanny state. A state created in the image of the spurned joint family and village. If you belong in the nanny state you obviously can't do as you please. The violent debate in America since the civil war is merely this. The desire to enjoy the fruits of the nanny state and none of its costs. Yet, lawlessness, slaves, no taxation, and soon guns - one by one the freedoms fall because the alternative is unbearable. The land of the not-so-free then. The nanny state where it has evolved without as much trouble in places like Singapore, Scandinavia, Japan and S. Korea soon offers not only free education, healthcare, housing and retirement care but also child care services, emotional support through social workers, and even plays matchmaker by offering financial rewards to tie the knot. Yet loneliness plagues their citizens because the nanny state lacks the human contact of a family. So they nanny state still has a few evolutions left to complete its cloning of the joint family. Even though nanny state citizens have mostly become obedient servants of the carrot and stick it rankles in their heart that they have gone no further in net freedom. So this too will only last a while before another evolutionary cycle is prompted by frustration. Humans are experts at deluding themselves. At each stage in our evolution from stone age to the plastic age social order has changed to accommodate the insatiable need for freedom. However the desire for selfish freedom is a bottomless pit that can never be filled. Every new stage of freedom has spawned dissatisfaction and a new complaint. To desire selfish freedom is to deny the interconnectedness of life, and no one alive wins by betting against life. So freedom is not found on the outside, but on the inside. It is found in total acceptance of the reality that freedom as popularly sought is a lie. When liberation occurs from within, all need to innovate on one's social condition with a view to escape ends. This is what every serious inquiry into life since the dawn of man has revealed. We are lucky to live in age of plenty, where many of us spend years specializing in a profession. We should take the op
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 11:00 +0530, Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote:
> Don't agree with this observation by the Kerala HC, but the article
> below[1] posted by Madhu yesterday on Facebook demonstrates how
> ingrained
> playing as a team is in India.
>From a Hindu (also Jain and Sikh) viewpoint, "team play" is the basis of
Dharma which roughly corresponds to "duties of man".
Literally, "Dharma" is derived from the Sanskrit root "dhru" - which
means "to retain or preserve" and Dharma is what preserves and binds
society together. So it is teamwork by definition.
When you look at it this way, you can see how rulings that go against
what is called "Dharma" are considered as assaults on societies that
accept Dharma as their way of life. In any case Dharma, seen as "duty to
family and society" is essentially secular in concept and is practiced
by Indian Muslims and Christians as well. In his book about Mumbai,
("Maximum City") Suketu Mehta interviews and quotes a professional
assassin - a Muslim working for the Chota Shakeel gang (I think) who
performed his daily prayers without fail even as he bumped off people
because that was his "Dharm" which he had to fulfil. The same man also
verbalized the sound of a bullet tearing through human flesh - I can't
recall the exact thing but it was described in the book as something
like "php". Charming stuff.
This "team play" is why Indian American parents pay for their children's
education, and get their parents over to the US to live out their last
days under their care in a repeat of what was done by their parents,
echoing what happens in millions of Indian families, including my own.
shiv
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On 4 March 2014 10:30, SS wrote: > On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 13:00 -0800, Raj Shekhar wrote: > > What I see here is that you are using the model laid out in the Indian > > texts (I assume the Hindu religious texts). Using this model has > > benefits, but the bias that might creep in there is that the good of > > many outweigh the needs of few. > > In fact I have not read a single Hindu religious or non religious text > in my entire life which will soon hit six decades. Note that I did not > even mention the word Hindu in my post. I base my views solely on my > observations of society in India and they apply to Indians - meaning > Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Christians. That is the way life has > been lived in Indian society and continues to a great extent. > > There is a curious way in which things that are common to a whole lot of > Indians are attributed to Hindus alone - and this is one example of a > type of cognitive bias. Parents looking after children looking after > elderly parents, collective family decision making, mandatory > heterosexual marriage, fixing marriages within a community > Don't agree with this observation by the Kerala HC, but the article below[1] posted by Madhu yesterday on Facebook demonstrates how ingrained playing as a team is in India. Kiran [1] http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/Parents-Have-a-Say-in-Marriage-of-Their-Children-Kerala-HC/2014/03/01/article2083620.ece#.UxVkDvmSx8H
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 13:00 -0800, Raj Shekhar wrote: > What I see here is that you are using the model laid out in the Indian > texts (I assume the Hindu religious texts). Using this model has > benefits, but the bias that might creep in there is that the good of > many outweigh the needs of few. Yes indeed. The good of the many does outweigh the needs of the few. That is true of laws in every country on earth, let alone within religions despite a lot of tripe being spoken about "individual freedom" of which not a lot exists in the self proclaimed free societies of the world. Individual freedom exists only in a small space created for it by common consent within the framework of what many want. But that, and how laws are bent to benefit the few, is a different subject. Speaking of religion, I have not read a single Hindu religious or non religious text in my entire life which will soon hit six decades. Note that I did not even mention the word Hindu in my post. I base my views solely on my observations of society in India and they apply to Indians - meaning Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Christians. That is the way life has been lived in Indian society and continues to a great extent. There is a curious way in which things that are common to a whole lot of Indians are attributed to Hindus alone - and this is one example of a type of cognitive bias. Parents looking after children looking after elderly parents, collective family decision making, mandatory heterosexual marriage, fixing marriages within a community, a bias against homosexuality, the requirement to procreate are social mores that cut across all religions in India. In fact that behaviour extends across an entire patch of the earth from north Africa to the far east. Yes it may be "Hindu behaviour" in common parlance but guess what? Within this common "Hindu behaviour" the only thing that is not common to all is the particular god that is worshipped. Funny innit? So what is religious about this behaviour? shiv
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 13:00 -0800, Raj Shekhar wrote: > What I see here is that you are using the model laid out in the Indian > texts (I assume the Hindu religious texts). Using this model has > benefits, but the bias that might creep in there is that the good of > many outweigh the needs of few. In fact I have not read a single Hindu religious or non religious text in my entire life which will soon hit six decades. Note that I did not even mention the word Hindu in my post. I base my views solely on my observations of society in India and they apply to Indians - meaning Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Christians. That is the way life has been lived in Indian society and continues to a great extent. There is a curious way in which things that are common to a whole lot of Indians are attributed to Hindus alone - and this is one example of a type of cognitive bias. Parents looking after children looking after elderly parents, collective family decision making, mandatory heterosexual marriage, fixing marriages within a community, a bias against homosexuality, the requirement to procreate are social mores that cut across all religions in India. Yes it may be "Hindu behaviour" in common parlance but guess what? Within this common "Hindu behaviour" the only thing that is not common to all is the particular god that is worshipped. Funny innit? So what is religious about this behaviour? shiv
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
In infinite wisdom SS wrote: > > I am going to start with a quote from the end of the article. It is not > my intention to argue with the premise of the article, but to point out > that "the way one should live life" has been studied through the ages > and Indian culture has some different recommendations that are visibly > practised even today. > > Here's the quote: > > That’s why your strategy is important. Because by the time most of us > > have figured life out, we’ve used up too much of the best parts. > > The article looks at life like a single player game. Life can be a > single player game or a team game in which multiple players cooperate. > In India life is defined as a multiple player game in which your life is > played in family and society from the day you are born. > I write this simply to illustrate that no person or no culture can > claim to have the best advice on living life. if you grow up in one > culture it is very difficult to understand or relate to the way things > work in another. > I am a big believer in using multiple models to understand reality. Using multiple models handles bias inherent to any individual model. What I see here is that you are using the model laid out in the Indian texts (I assume the Hindu religious texts). Using this model has benefits, but the bias that might creep in there is that the good of many outweigh the needs of few. The author of the article is using the model of a single player game, where "winning" by the player, at all costs , is the end goal. This model can be useful when you are in a situation which is a zero-sum game. -- Raj Shekhar @ilunatech http://rajshekhar.net/blog Operative: "Do you know what your sin is?" Mal: "Aw hell. I'm a fan of all seven."
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 07:53 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Pasted here so I can refer to it later, in case of bitrot. But you > should really read this at the URL below, with all illustrations. > > Comments? > > Udhay > > http://oliveremberton.com/2014/life-is-a-game-this-is-your-strategy-guide/ > I am going to start with a quote from the end of the article. It is not my intention to argue with the premise of the article, but to point out that "the way one should live life" has been studied through the ages and Indian culture has some different recommendations that are visibly practised even today. Here's the quote: > That’s why your strategy is important. Because by the time most of us > have figured life out, we’ve used up too much of the best parts. The article looks at life like a single player game. Life can be a single player game or a team game in which multiple players cooperate. In India life is defined as a multiple player game in which your life is played in family and society from the day you are born. The article says: > > The first 15 years or so of life are just tutorial missions, which suck. > > There’s no way to skip these > > Correct, but according to Indian rules, it is the responsibility of parents, who are already past this phase to assist children in this phase so that they are taught life skills and are not left in debt at the end. The team rule is that the parents should not concentrate on simply improving their own individual lives, but sacrifice time and effort on one's child/children > > Your willpower level is especially important. Willpower fades throughout > > the day, and is replenished slightly by eating, and completely by a good > > night’s sleep. When your willpower is low, you are only able to do > > things you really want to This statement really throws up the contrast between life as mooted in Indian culture and what the author believes life should be like. Let me explain that. In his recommendation the author concentrates on the individual. Its about what "you" need to do and what "you" do for yourself. Unfortunately this is bad advice in some situations. A woman with a child often has no choice. She may not even get a chance to go to the toilet. She is living life for "us" with the child. All children grow up initially being fully dependent on an adult. Different cultures throw out children as "independent at different stages. In Indian culture children are never considered as being "out and independent". > > Attraction is a complex mini-game in itself, but mostly a byproduct of > > how you’re already playing. If you have excellent state and high skills, > > you’re far more attractive already. A tired, irritable, unskilled player > > is not appealing, and probably shouldn’t be looking for a relationship. > > > > Marriage > > > > Early in the game it can be common to reject and be rejected by other > > players. This is normal, but unfortunately it can drain your state, as > > most players don’t handle rejection or rejecting well. You’ll need to > > expend willpower to keep going, and willpower is replenished by sleep, > > so give it time. > > > > 80% of finding someone comes down to being your most attractive self, > > which – like so much in life – just means putting your time in the right > > places. If you’re exercising, socialising, well nourished and growing in > > your career, you will radiate attraction automatically. The remaining > > 20% is simply putting yourself in places where you can meet the right > > people. Marriage is not left to chance in Indian culture. It is mandatory. Right or wrong, the exhaustive effort that is needed to make a person "attractive" is put in by the family. Arranged marriages, while not having a great reputation actually do work for reasons that might seem incredible to an outside observer. Arranged marriages come bundled with family support, financial, psychological and physical. Each individual in the arranged marriage is assured of some help and support in living their individual lives in exchange for toeing the family line. One ignored aspect of arranged marriages is the fact that they often occur within a restricted cultural group so that irritants that may arise in later life are avoided. It is more than likely that the food that one partner likes, which mommy used to cook at home, is exactly the food that the spouse enjoys and cooks. Likes and dislikes, biases and whines are often shared. > The most important rule of money is never to borrow it, except for > things that earn you more back. For example, education or a mortgage > can > be worthwhile (but are not necessarily so, depending on the education > or > the mortgage). Borrowing to buy new shoes is not. > > Depending on your financial ambitions, here are a few strategies to > bear > in mind: > > Not fussed about money. The low-stress strategy: simply live within > your > means and save a little for a rainy day. Be sure to make the best of > al
