We were friends again

 

Sitting in the Ethiopian airline Lounge
      at Addis Ababa
my guest David had wondered
if I were flying
      in Business class.

There was a look on his face
      that comes from sensing
that an injustice
      is being done.

We, after all,
were two peas in pod;
there was nothing elite about us,
so why I am flying Business
while he was not,
      he had wondered.

I put his misgivings aside
and said, no,
I am not flying in Business
but just using a privilege
that came with the Gold status
for living a million mile
of my life
      in the air.

His face relaxed.
He felt at peace.
We were friends again.

Connectedness is an antidote to mortality

 

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself — Carl Sagan

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

On rare occasions, I receive a gift of connectedness. The trigger could be the upbeat rhythm, or its opposite, the sadness of a song. It could be an aftermath of immersing in moments of creativity, or a gust of cool wind in the middle of summer brushing against the face. It could be an unexpected whiff of sweet fragrance of jasmine, or a chance look at the open spaces stretching to the horizon that is aglow with an orange sunset. It could be a sudden ache of nostalgia of moments gone by and realizing how old I have become and how little time is left there to be lived.

The feeling of connectedness dissolves the invisible boundaries between the self that I am and the rest that is out there. Without the notion of duality I have always lived with, the idea of the destruction of the self after death also dissipates. The fear of mortality, in those ever-fleeting moments, no longer haunts.

After all, what else is the fear of mortality if not the fear of the destruction of the self? The thought that I will no longer be here, but the party will continue without me is the fear and the angst of mortality. I simply wish not to disappear without a trace.

Today, I experienced brief moments of connectedness, and for an instant, the fear of mortality receded once more. In its wake, a question emerged: Could the self I possess be immortal, and is my fear of mortality merely irrational?

At the physical level I am immortal. I am connected with everything else that existed or will exist in space and time.

I, like everything that is out there, is made of the same atoms that originated at the moment of the Big Bang. After death, the atoms of my physical self would be given back to the universe. They would eventually become part of some other form — a rock, a bacterium, a chimpanzee, perhaps another human being.

The principle of conservation of energy provides the foundation for my physical immortality and I have no reason to doubt that I will continue to exist either as matter or as ephemeral energy.

Would my consciousness self also continue to exist beyond the moment of my death? After my death, would I remember what I was and what I accomplished during this lifetime?

As for my conscious self, other than for a few moments when I feel connected with the rest of the universe (and when the sense mortality dissolves), I am not as certain about my immortality.

There is no phenomenological evidence for my immortality. In my current form I do not remember anything what I was prior to taking this form. People pass away and without missing a beat the universe continues on its merry journey. There is nothing to make me think that the same would not happen when I die.

Even if my consciousness is immortal, however, if it does not have any remembrance, then functionally, that immortality is equivalent to being mortal.

For all I know, the awareness of self may have been just an outgrowth of the process of natural selection and is meant to increase my chances for survival and reproduction. The self is nothing more than that and when I die there is nothing left vying for survival and reproduction.

It is only in the rare moments of connectedness that the awareness of self is eliminated. In those moments, the self is no longer the skin I need. But it is also hard to let that skin go and feel naked, and so I hold on to the self and become a mortal again.

Ciao.

Will the universe care?

 

Whether I get up tomorrow
or whether I don’t,
will the universe care?

The answer to that question
I do not know.

I will not be around
looking down
      from above
or will be looking
in the rear view mirror
      at the receding road to check
if someone steps to the podium
to read a eulogy.

What I do know
      is that you
who sleeps next to me
in the wee hours of the morning
with a Mona Lisa smile
spread across the lips
while admiring the colors of
blooming Petunias in your dreams,
will.

Natural Selection and the Stock Market

 

If there are other worlds elsewhere in the universe, I would conjecture they are governed by the same laws of natural selection — Richard Dawkins

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Three fundamental elements are essential for the emergence of natural selection and evolution: (i) a finite pool of resources, such as energy; (ii) a diverse population capable of replication, ranging from simple self-replicating molecules to complex organisms like humans, with variations in traits within the population affecting resource acquisition efficiency; and (iii) the passage of time.

If one possessed divine powers, simply introducing three core elements would suffice for a complex tapestry of biology on a planet like ours to evolve: limited resources; a replicating population with trait variance; and time. Starting from there, the divine power would sit back and observe the unfolding of evolution.

The relentless pursuit of resources, coupled with the instinct to replicate, would inevitably give rise to increasingly complex and efficient life forms. Over time, this pursuit for efficiency would also catalyze the emergence of consciousness, the development of language for improved communication, and the formation of agrarian societies to support growing resource demands, all aiding in the race to excel over others.

Even at a more fundamental level, the mere presence of finite energy and existence of a primordial chemical mixture sets the stage for the inevitable rise of self-replicating entities, paving the way for the inevitability for the process of natural selection and evolution to occur.

Natural selection, however, extends beyond biological arena. Whenever three specific conditions converge in any domain, the principles of natural selection and evolution will take hold. A contemporary illustration of this is the dynamics of the stock market.

To draw parallels, let us first identify the presence of three essential components in the stock market.

Within the stock market’s framework, the ‘resource’ equates to the discretionary capital held by investors. The ‘population’ consists of diverse companies, each vying for that capital with their unique characteristics (or traits). Time, as always, is plenty.

Similar to biological entities, the primary objective for companies is to ensure their continuity and expansion, which they achieve by securing capital. The biological selection mechanism determining which traits are advantageous is mirrored their effectiveness in drawing investors and their money.

Companies strive to highlight a range of traits to capture investors’ interest and secure funding. These traits include above-average profitability, effective management, promising growth prospects, and investment in innovation to develop new products or enhance existing ones.

It is crucial to understand that the process is self-driven and natural. Individuals have discretionary funds at their disposal, which companies aim to attract. The stock exchange serves as the meeting ground, and that is where the intricate dance of natural selection plays out.

Just as environmental pressures — such as resource scarcity, climatic shifts, the advent of new pathogens, geographical transformations, and alterations in predator-prey relationships — steer the evolution of biological organisms, external factors also influence the evolution of companies. Examples of such changes include the rise of disruptive technologies like Uber, political turmoil that heightens the stock appeal of defense-focused firms, and public sentiment, such as attributing responsibility for climate change to certain corporations. And thus, along the path of evolution, the environmental pressures also evolve and affect which traits will be preferred.

Remarkable parallels exist between the evolutionary processes of organisms and companies, with both driven by the imperative to acquire resources more efficiently, leading to greater complexity with time (I am sure you have heard about complex financial transactions like hedge funds and derivatives). Nonetheless, distinctions between the two also exist.

In the stock market, investors engage in deliberate decision-making (despite the debatable rationality and objectivity of their choices), contrasting with natural selection influencing living organisms, which is an instinctive process shaped entirely by environmental forces.

Another distinction lies in the role of central banks, which actively work to tinker with market conditions and do not let the process of natural selection play out to its full potential. While there may be a natural selection counterpart to this regulatory influence in the present era - human intervention is now a significant factor in the evolution of species - it did not used to be this way.

An additional contrast is the potential for resource (i.e., capital) availability to expand over time for stock markets. 

Despite these differences, there are striking resemblances in the evolution of companies and biological organisms within their respective domains. This is inherently due to the combination of three fundamental elements listed at the beginning, which necessitates such a parallel.

Ciao.