Mona Lisa, Adam Smith & The Success Equation

Here's an experiment. There's Rafiki holding Simba up above his shoulders. Do you think you'd define success the same way as Rafiki did in the Lion King? Picture credit: The Lion King

“College di gate de is taraf hum life ko nachate hai… te duji taraf life humko nachati hai,” said Aamir Khan’s character DJ in the movie Rang De Basanti with his unkempt hair. While it’s a complex web that forms the amorphous dance floor of life that forms the stage for DJ’s dialogue, this essay really just focuses on how capitalism interweaves a major part of that dance floor and affects how ‘successful’ and happy one is.

The Backstory

A friend at work prompted this subject when she was writing about ‘decoding success’. It made me think too - in our capitalistic world, how do we define success? What is success and is it the same everywhere and every time? Let’s say everything about us – professionally and personally – remains constant. Now, would you be happier if you were in free-market heaven US? And what about tightly controlled North Korea? Would the same professional achievements lead to the same idea of success? Would the ideological drive override the thirst for material success?

Or would you be happier if you’d achieved it all in the blooming 1960s than now? Try this with a few more questions and you’ll probably agree that what we call success could be so different in these different times and circumstances. So it’s so much a product of a varying set of factors that include material success, professional achievement, ideological drives and more. Perhaps Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would have so much to add here.

Anyway, let’s get back to capitalism for now. There’s little denying, that today, capitalism is the force that influences our personal lives, professional decisions and more importantly our political and economic systems. While there’s opposition to it, it mostly does find a way to call the shots, in part or as a whole. The fact that success is more often than not defined, or at least described, in terms of material success and wealth generated is testimony to hoe much capitalism affects our lives.

The Mona Lisa, perhaps the most
famous painting in the world, was painted
by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1500s. But
do we call Leonardo a gifted,
master artist or a successful artist?  

Think about it. We talk about great artists who paint or have painted masterpieces, gifted musicians who make restless souls come alive and beautiful minds of scientists who make astounding discoveries among other things, but we hardly ever call use the word successful when talking about them. The usual words reserved for them are gifted, great, beautiful, unconventional and legendary et al. Successful is, however, mostly reserved for those who excel in terms of creating businesses, achieving professional heights and accumulating wealth. Isn’t that capitalism playing on our minds?

So capitalism shapes the world around us in such a manner that it influences so many of our decisions, including about our work. Jeff Hammerbacher, the man who’s credited with coining the word data science, also had another important set of words to say. In this ‘post-truth’ era though, I really cannot guarantee if he said it, even after some research. Anyway, what he supposedly said was, “The best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click on ads.”

While not all great minds may be preoccupied with creating click-baits, that one-liner is really quite telling. Doesn’t that tell you how much capitalism influences our ideas and our professional choices? And clearly, what affects our professional decisions is bound to affect our happiness quotients as well. Quotient! Look it me trying to quantify happiness, another gift of capitalism maybe.

Adam Smith was the first to spot
the invisible hand. Aren't invisible
things difficult to regulate? 

So where does capitalism derive that power to affect our happiness then? Well what’s inherent to capitalism is laissez-faire – the idea of a free market where private ownership is the boss, where things are left free to take their own course. Here, it’s the invisible hand, as Adam Smith wrote centuries ago, that runs the show.

And as this invisible hand pushes people to maximise profits, it provokes competition. So while it implies that the quality of products and the costs of production are constantly worked upon and innovation thrives, it also sparks a fear of missing out (FOMO in our lingo today) and often kills the idea of taking things slow. (There are other issues with capitalism too, but this essay doesn’t contend with those.)

An Individual’s Conundrum

So while it is good for economic prosperity and should ideally be self-moderating, capitalism has other by-products in terms of how it affects individuals professionally, personally and emotionally. Of course, one may also argue the other way, that it also has its rewards. Individuals reap the benefits of professional success too then and amass wealth. But that’s just capitalism’s nature; the price payers always outnumber the beneficiaries.

While desks today look cleaner with the advent of
computers, the work load has perhaps only risen.
Or is your desk still as messy?
Picture credit: Carrotstown

Professionally, it pushes people relentlessly and can lead to individuals burning out – physically or mentally – as they are being driven by their immediate needs, the invisible hand and the social contexts around them. And like the click-bait example shows, it literally can make people opt for peculiar yet paying jobs that may not make one happy. Now tell me, how many times have you sidelined something you loved to do for a job that paid more?

Personally, it just takes away so much of your time. It makes you work more. Perhaps one the top economists of all time, and a ‘successful’ one too given his stock market adventures, JM Keynes had predicted almost a century ago that as our economies develop, our future generations will have to work less and less and will have more time for leisure. Well, wonder what happened. Most of us have really just been working more. 

Sacrificing those Saturday night plans with friends for
the work meeting to crack a deal for the company.
How tough is that choice? 

Working more is great when passion and interest are combined, but most people aren’t that fortunate. And even for the ones who are, work really knows ways to get the better off them. Haven’t you been forced to call off Saturday night plans with friends for work? It’s easy to see now where DJ was coming from with that Rang De dialogue.

And well, we all know how all of that can play on us emotionally. While some thrive of professional challenges and entrepreneurial adventures, for many professional burdens can hurt our state of mind, and our relationships. Professional ups and downs really affect us, and the feeling of being in a perpetual maze or race can leave us distraught and isolated. And while we all have our coping mechanisms, don’t we need a little more than those?

The Success Equation

It’s a cost then, which is attached to the prize. In our individual quests for professional success, we are often told hard work is the only option. Even so much of the content we consume suggests the same – let's look at Suits where the Harvey and Mike are always shown working till late in suits while their personal relationships are underplayed – or the exact opposite in form of an escape from it all – for instance Two And A Half Men where work was hardly ever featured.

And while hard work is not something to shy away from, it’s important to prioritise amidst our individual and combined struggles to achieve economic prosperity and emotional happiness, because aren’t those, in their subjective proportions, crucial conditions of being 'successful' in life, as we know it today?

Will I sleep better if I complete that presentation for office in time or will I be happier if I play with my unperturbed beagles in the mud for a little while? Such tradeoffs, it’s almost criminal. And while capitalism will always prioritise profits, shouldn’t we prioritise happiness as well? And the twain shall only meet in a fine balance, if at all. While they derive so much from one another, they can also turn on each other.

We are all born different. So while we can have common
measures to contextualise success, can we really have a
universal set to define it? And more importantly, should we?
Picture credit: Maya Eye Photography

So how one defines success may always be a function of our achievements, our emotional wellbeing (those are so subjective too), the tradeoffs, our ideological inclinations and our backgrounds. There can be so much too. While to some the achievements may outweigh the tradeoffs, to others the tradeoffs may be heart wrenching. To many ideological drives may define their route to success, to others material wealth may be paramount. 

And while I’ll let you work on your own equation of success, let’s look at success as a combination of elements and in the context of the times and ideas that shape our world. Only then perhaps, will we really be able to answer, how 'successful' we are. And however far or close one may find oneself to that 'success' and its contributors, do keep working, but perhaps in a different way, and maybe even on a different thing, because work still will always remain one of the keys to whatever we call success in the end.

PS: The essay title itself may have been click-bait here. Couldn't resist. Also, the use of the words cost, equation and quotient among others in this essay are by themselves also indications of how our minds (at least mine) have been attuned to evaluate things in life – in form of (two-way) transactions, even when we have Mastercard ads on loop, reminding us that some moments in life are ‘priceless’.

Temples in India to the ‘Joy’ of success: Comparing paths to feminism

In the movie Joy, Jennifer Lawrence plays a single mother whose struggles are fueled by the non-recognition of creativity at home and the absence of economic opportunity outside, all subject to the undercurrents of neoliberal individualism that influence her decisions and help her define her road to success. Photo credit: Joy, the movie

There are numerous objectives or quests in life, from individual and societal to national and global, and correspondingly and arguably there are numerous ways of achieving them. With that in mind, this essay focuses on understanding the definition of feminism and the various approaches towards advancing or enforcing it.

The first month of the year highlighted two approaches to the cause of feminism. While one long unfolding incident in the Indian state of Maharashtra saw a group of women frame their argument around the “right to pray” (a socio-political rights approach) in their quest for practicing feminism, the other was a break from tradition in Hollywood to depict lone women in their fight for justice with the release of Joy, a film inspired by the life of Joy Mangano and her struggles as a single mother as she built her own business empire (an economic rights approach).

While it is imperative to underline that individual beliefs, life experiences, immediate needs and larger political social and economic environments prevalent and dominant in the surroundings have a lot to contribute towards their actions, it would be a mistake not to see how both these disparate approaches that sought to achieve different goals fall under the wider umbrella of realising feminism and advancing the cause of gender equality.

While as individuals, one may be subject to limitations in terms of what goal(s) among these (social, political or economic rights) we are able to focus on and correspondingly what road we take in our struggles to achieve them, as societies and larger communities it is essential for us to work towards protecting and ensuring an all-inclusive enforcement of feministic ideals and to perpetually interrogate and adjust the road we take to achieve those goals. Because to realise feminism in all it’s earnest, equality needs to be protected and ensured across all realms (social, political and economic among others). And what road we take to do that may well define how we look at feminism it self.

But who or what defines feminism?

For all further references, it is imperative to define the meaning of feminism as understood and studied by me. Feminism, as its name suggests, was born as the idea of advocacy of women’s rights. But it has grown into a bigger idea today. Today it stands for equal rights for all, across all realms. It’s an all-inclusive understanding and approach towards advocating equality.

However, as the definition of feminism has itself evolved and enlarged to encompass more than women’s rights, it will only be wise to recognise that this definition may further evolve over time. And what will affect this definition or the realisation of these values are not just other socio-political or economic factors, but also the approach we take towards practicing feminism. For the architecture we design, also designs our perspectives. Since the journey is part of the destination, it holds enough power to influence the ride and throw up its own set of challenges. In the words of Professor Nancy Fraser, our critique of sexism may “supply the justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation”.

This temple at Shani Shingnapur, Maharashtra, was the subject of a debate around the equality of rights for women when it comes to praying there. About 1,000 women had together to storm this temple to enforce their rights. Photo credit: The Indian Express

The two approaches

So in the two cases described above, while the parent idea is that of feminism, the goals and approaches to them are part of the subsets of socio-political and economic rights and opportunity respectively.

Social solidarity - The Shani Shingnapur temple issue: In brief, this one’s about a 1,000 women led by Trupti Desai gearing up to storm a temple in Shani Shingnapur, a village in western Maharashtra. At this temple, women were not allowed to set foot on the open platform where the idol is installed. Men, however, could do so, for a fee. Here’s the full story. Though this doesn’t directly concern the subject of this essay, here’s also a take on if we should even care about temple entry, and that even when we do, putting it all under the umbrella of the ‘right to pray’ is not the best thing to do.

So this quest for demanding equal rights stemmed from the discrimination at a place of worship and it took a socio-political approach to enforcing it. Social solidarity, something that has long been a characteristic of the feminism struggle, is what Desai sought in this path to tackle gender discrimination. The recent appointment of women qazis in Jaipur and their resolve to bring in a feminine perspective when it comes to pronouncing judgments is another example of social solidarity being the go to approach to advance feminism.

Neoliberal individualism – Joy, the movie: This one’s a story inspired by the life of Joy Mangano, a single mother entrepreneur whose home-made mop made her a fortune. Here’s more about the movie. So in this case, Joy’s story draws from her fight for freedom and opportunity while struggling with the disappointments of a life curtailed by her modest surroundings, and complicated by the responsibilities of being a single mother of three, a supporting child to her divorced parents and a lone bread-earner.

But this story chalks closer to the path of entrepreneurism, a spirit that’s fostered by the invisible hand, as Joy earnestly grabs or even creates economic opportunities that help her build a huge business and rewrite her circumstances. Her quest for feminism is fueled by the want and need of a better quality of life, and she sees economic equality and opportunity as the road to it and she fights for it. This story also goes a long way to show how the quest for feminism and the path we take to it is also a product of the times we live in. Joy, in the US, is subject to the undercurrents of neoliberal individualism that influence her decisions and actions, and while hers is a story of success, it must also be seen as a success story of capitalism feeding off the ambivalence of feminism.

What road to take: Solidarity or individualism?

On the onset it may not seem to matter, but while in the short-term capitalism demands equality in all respects so as to ensure that the invisible hand thrives, in the long-term unattended (read: unregulated) capitalism also does have a huge tendency to fall prey to corruption and thus advancing itself while reshaping what it feeds off, thereby, in this case perhaps, creating a form of neoliberal feminism.

And while social solidarity may have been the go to approach for feminists, in contemporary times, the lure of this form of solidarity has been dominated by the overarching attraction of individual success stories. It has also been diluted by ideas that exist at the very peripheries of capitalism and feminism and stand for gender equality but can be maneuvered to feed capitalism while advancing feminism in the short-term, and hurting the overall quest for it in the long-term. The “feminist critique of the family wage” and it’s implications is an example where this complexity can be further observed.

So while in Maharashtra socio-political rights and social solidary defined their path for gender equality, in the US that quest was defined by neoliberal individualism for Joy, with each quest being subject to its context.

Perhaps, another characteristic of feminism then, is that while it advocates equality, it recognises that there may not be a particular approach to enforce it and that the quest and the approach may themselves be defined by the times and the context. And while this definition evolves, it may not be in a strict solidarity or in naively taking neoliberal individualism as the approach that feminism may find its best friend, but perhaps in a new form of balance that may reside between these and perhaps others.

The road to Refugia

Yazidi families fleeing an attack by the Islamic State near the Iraq border. The number of forcibly displaced people today stands at over 59.5 million - roughly equal to the population of Italy. Photo credit: Reuters

Can we carve out a piece of land that refugees can call home? That’s a question that many are discussing, thanks to the buzz created around the idea by real estate millionaire Jason Buzi with his Refugee Nation project. What makes this discussion so urgent is the fact despite advances in the spheres of economy, technology, human rights and academics, the number of refugees around the world has just kept on growing. That number of forcibly displaced people today stands at over 59.5 million – roughly equal to the population of Italy.

The immediate demand for attention and action comes as thousands feel outraged and perhaps helpless as they see a colossal people crisis unfold in various parts of the world. A substantial number also feel threatened by the same. The crisis in Europe may have gotten maximum attention, but similar issues in Southeast Asia or other parts of Africa are no less significant or pain-striking. And hence comes forward the idea of a refugee nation, as Buzi puts it.

That idea has perhaps long existed in fiction. Talk about the eco-refugees in the movies Mad Max or Water World or the idea of a new-age Noah’s Ark built by rich nations with tickets sold to the elite in the movie 2012. Well, for all its purposes, wasn’t the actual idea of Noah’s Ark also to provide refuge in a time of environmental disaster? These examples, irrespective of their existence in fiction, point to two types of insights when it comes to a refugee crisis – temporary and permanent.

While eco-refugees, like the ones climate change is perhaps creating, need permanent solutions today; the idea that a safe, temporary solution should be sought in the time of need is what perhaps guided the creation of Noah’s Ark, either in reality or as a myth. That’s the approach refugee camps take, don’t’ they? They are meant to serve as temporary shelters until the refugees can be granted permanent citizenship elsewhere or until conditions turn favourable for their return to their home country. But these are desired scenarios that seldom arrive, and often at snail’s pace, giving those temporary shelters permanent attributes.

Where these shelters exist, how they are sustained and how they evolve to integrate with society as refugees become citizens are the key questions then. Currently, they exist in recognised states like Jordan, Italy, Greece, Tanzania among many others. They are supported by the national governments, international organisations like the United Nations and non-governmental bodies and charities. The maximum stress, however, is often on the national government and these resources often don’t match the demand.

A refugee society-state

What this idea of a refugee nation does is that it answers these questions in different ways while also throwing up possible scenarios. The assumption is, those shelters – now permanent in nature – must exist on a separate territory that can be used to form a new state.

Further, this territory and the people should be sustained with the help of donations from the rich – states, people or companies, while the refugees take up tasks most attuned to their skills, for refugees are also people with skills and education, and some are doctors and engineers too. We tend to club them homogenously and often also mistakenly just call them migrants. So they can work there, earn a living and form a part of a refugee society that evolves into this accommodating, cosmopolitan society that takes in refugees with ease, as and when they arrive in the future (ideally that number will organically go down). Buzi is aiming for a permanent, sustainable and universal solution with this idea. So, this would be home then. Essentially, adding to the meaning of the word refugee – for now Refugia (a term coined by Professor Robin Cohen of the International Migration Institute) is a permanent home for the refugees. So either, the nature of the way we use the word changes or its meaning becomes larger.

People from the Rohingya community collect water to drink at a refugee camp in Myanmar. While the crisis in Europe has gotten maximum attention, the people's crisis is unfortunately much more universal than it appears. Photo credit: AP 

But what else changes?

A change in the usage of the word will more importantly correspondingly change the way we respond to it. While, the idea of a refugee nation is stimulating, it must grow into much more than a survivor’s camp. Can it have a permanent structure by itself? Should it?

In fact, what is primitively essential to acknowledge is that, in a lucid form, a nation as such already exists; for a nation is a large body of people with a shared history or culture, inhabiting a particular territory. Currently that territory is fluidic and is dispersed across states around the world. To consolidate that territory into one mass, and to bring those people to that mass is a legitimate response to mitigate the crisis, but it seems unlikely to be a long-term solution to it. There’s need for innovation in responses to this bludgeoning refugee crisis, and as the ‘Airbnb for refugees’ initiative shows, that innovation is happening. It is imperative to recognise that these innovations help deal with the crisis, not solve it at the source. And the problems at that source arise from hardships entrenched in socio, political and economic grounds, among others.

But for immediate responses, I vote for the creation of a refugee station, rather than a refugee nation. Without pre-conditions, it should be welcoming and serve as a platform to provide urgent security of all kinds, support to re-integrate with society and confidence to find home in the long-term. A station that is born under the aegis of the United Nations rather than as charity of a private kind, as Professor Cohen suggests. While the funds can come from donations, the efficacy in its functioning can only be derived from a principled approach embedded in perhaps a partnership of the public and the private. They’ll need to be a setup of governance quite akin to the one of federalism for self-governance to flourish or else this may end up being just another refugee camp. Freedom is what people are after – political, social and economic – let’s not forget that.

Where will this territory be and how will it be procured? These are questions that need much discussion, to ensure ease of accessibility and sustainability as well. Also, this Refugia must not just serve as the mirage of an oasis that attracts refugees, but be a station to help and assist the ones in need, irrespective of existing state or creed. Validation would be another major process again, hurting the pace of settlement. This is an area that needs urgent innovation and rethinking.

Perhaps the United Nations could finally nail the search and finally become a wholesome, combined nation in itself. And would that not be tangible proof of a post-national world? It’ll have to be – post-national and transnational. And when it comes to opening the doors of this station, it must be important to acknowledge the meaning and difference in the words migrants and refugees and to recognise that both these words, at the end of the day, comprise people.

The perils of proposal

As Alexander Betts points out, the premise of the idea of a refugee nation is exclusion, not inclusion. What a blow could that be to the notion of refugee integration and what signal would it send to the perpetrators? One that they can create havoc, force people out and be rest-assured they’ll find their way to this safe, welcoming place? The creation of such a nation/station will have to go hand-in-hand with that of fighting the causes at their roots, aggressively. For this station will also serve as the best incubation pad to come up methods to tackle the crisis at home.

There are more threats. Would the shared experiences of the refugees create harmony and brotherhood, or could the disparate cultural and religious understandings lead to conflicts that threaten the existence of this land of peace? Also, would it not create another class across the world? A class of people that donates and thinks of itself as saviours of this oppressed refugee class. But this one may not be that big a problem in the future, for such corrupt attitudes to charity already exist, promoting what Slavoj Zizek calls cultural capitalism.

Would you help form it?

Despite the perils, if an agency were to ensure the sustainability of such a station to mitigate this people’s crisis, I would. Would you, as long as you are assured of the transparency and accountability of the project? Accountability towards refugees, and you, and states too. For those national governments where these people are coming from shall continue to have stake in this crisis. But would this idea also not raise doubts about the promotion of this charity industry? Those questions are as valid as the search for responses to the crisis, and until we find them, such innovations must not only be debated but also implemented methodically with caution, perhaps with institutional help.

For whatever the nature of world politics, innovation and constructivism are what shall see us through. How we define and employ them may ultimately seal the deal. For, it’s not possible to imagine my thought processes if I were a refugee (it may also be a cruel test), but if I were to attempt to respond to the idea of this refugee station, the answer would be a definite, “Yes, take me there”. But then, I would still seek my home, and there are reasonable doubts if Refugia will be able to provide one in the long-term.