Sweet revenge of the polar bear

 Arun Kumar

My left hand sometimes does not know what the right hand is doing. Maybe this happens more often than I realize. Why else has the phrase become an idiom? To get a feel of its omnipresence, a few more examples are in order.

Jet-setting climate scientists run around the world to communicate their latest findings about global warming and forget that the contrails left behind and the fuel burned just raised the greenhouse gasses by a fraction. In the evening, they dine on a juicy steak forgetting that environmentally it is much better to be a vegetarian.

In a meeting at work someone will casually throw out the notion that we should not be working in silos and feel smug about the penetrating statement. Suddenly a day out of the wild blue yonder, matrix management becomes a tsunami that washes over us. I get matrixed and my one hour does not know what the next hour will be doing.

And my personal favorite - The time it takes to finish public projects in the United States (e.g., finishing a subway line) is so long that sometimes I wonder if one crew puts things together during the day while another crew tears down two thirds of it during the night. In the twilight of the evening, the two pass each other like ghosts.

There are plenty of other examples scattered around. This particular story of my left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing is about Coca-Cola, the Company, and their product, the Coke.

I myself do not drink Coke. The reason is that being health conscious, my left hand finds the nutritional content of Coke alarming. A 355 ml (or gram) can of Coke has 150 Calories, 14% of Daily Value (DV) of required carbs, all of them coming from 40 grams of sugar from high fructose corn syrup (which is a miracle of human ingenuity, in itself).

Sugar is not healthy for our metabolism. The genes we have inherited, and proteins, enzymes, amino acids that make us function, have been optimized through the slow precepts of natural selection. They get jolted by 17 teaspoons of sugar that is in a can of Coke. The 140 years since 1892 when Coke was invented is too short of a time for our metabolism to adjust to the new world reality where the availability of sugar is so much easier than picking berries while on a lookout for snakes.

The easy availability of sugar and our evolutionary conditioning is an explosive combination. The result is obesity and diabetes being epidemic, not to mention the sad history of sugar plantations (with their devastating influence on our history).

The World Health Organization has these cheering numbers to say: “About 422 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority living in low-and middle-income countries, and 1.5 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year. Both the number of cases and the prevalence of diabetes have been steadily increasing over the past few decades.”

Sugars not only taste fantastic, they have also become a cheap source for required daily intake of calories.

Maybe our addiction to sugars will continue to shape the future trajectory of history and evolution. Can we anticipate 100 generations from now, which faction of humanity will have the upper hand (the hand again!)? The ones who do not have a sweet tooth and have better self-control or the ones stalking the cookie aisles in the grocery stores?

If natural selection has any lessons to offer, then it will favor those with less of a fatal attraction for sugars. But don’t tell Coca-Cola that by promoting their product and hiring the polar bear, they are accelerating their own demise.

What we do not know is that the polar bear has his own agenda.

The sneaky master plan of the polar bear is to ensure that we will drink enough sugar and will not be around for much longer to melt the ice caps and destroy their habitat. The plan is a bit far-fetched, but at least it is a plan for taming runaway global warming. So far, we have none.

Oh well. Back to the story of conflict between my left hand and my right hand.

The right hand! What is it up to?

The right hand wants to have a comfortable retirement, and to have that, it wishes financial stability.

The right hand wants to have a return of 10% on the savings so by compounding, it can double the money every 7 years. To get that kind of average returns, it cannot stuff the money in a pillowcase, and hope for a miracle. Instead, it has to embrace stocks.

Not being a big risk taker or having the wherewithal to spend time on researching individual stocks, the right hand takes the option of investing in the S&P 500 Index fund. Afterall, it has heard that consistently outperforming and timing the markets is highly improbable. The Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund (VFINX) had an average return of 11.5% since its inception in 1976, so why not?

Investing money in VFINX is a ticket to a comfortable retirement. It may not be enough for buying a yacht and being anchored off the shores of St. Croix, but it will be good enough to live in a house a mile away from the beach and taking walks in the sand every evening.

So, the right hand goes ahead and invests in the VFINX . On crisp fall afternoons, it gazes in the blue sky and daydreams of money growing.  My right hand is just engaged in following its prime directive to ensure a 10% average return on investments.

But guess what, one of the stocks in VFINX, oops, is Coca-Cola.

The left hand, being health conscious, does not touch a can of Coke with a ten-foot pole, the right hand, by investing in  VFINX, wants humanity to consume Coke as much, and as long as possible.

The right hand wants KO to thrive and prosper.

The right hand urges us to listen to the polar bear and enjoy a few bottles of the chilled Coke every day. Please do that, it says, so I can retire comfortably one day with a longer, and a healthier lifespan, while you, oh well, sugars may not be good for your health, they taste so good.

Right hand’s wish for a healthy growth in the KO is at the expense of fellow human beings. Meanwhile the left hand wishes for a longer, healthy lifespan. It is the battle between good and evil, and neither wants to sit down at the table and negotiate.

There may be a way out of my moral conundrum though. Happily, Coke also has many other uses – kill slugs and snails, clean burned pots and pans, remove rust, and so on. They could become its selling point, and even if people stop drinking coke, Coca-Cola could still be a profitable company.  

If that happens, my left and right hands will shake hands together and live in harmony ever after. One of my many inner struggles will end.

Towards my wellbeing, let us raise our glasses, say a toast, and have a refreshing glass of Coke. Oh the irony…

 

Why have we not been visited by aliens?

Arun Kumar

St. Croix, US Virgin Island

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic – Arthur C. Clarke

St Croix. We are staying on the west side of the island and away from the reaches of civilization. It is a wonderful place. Sitting on the deck and while drinking my first cup of Earl Grey and taking in its aroma, while at a distance, I can view the turquoise ocean and undulating waves playing on its surface. 

It feels like heaven. It is a place where I have either forgotten my limitations or I have suddenly learned to be content with them. In either case, for a few moments, I sit feeling lightened and enlightened.

The night comes and we are going through the phase of the new moon. The city lights do not encroach on the dark brilliance of the night sky, where a million twinkling stars are shining. Their number seems much more than back home. A faint river of the Milky Way stretches across the sky.

The Big Dipper. The North Star. They are all there, partying quietly.

Among this brilliance and the silence, the stillness is occasionally broken by a sound of a gecko dreaming about its next meal.

Sitting here, looking at all those twinkling stars, I start to wonder why we have not seen alien beings yet. After all, there are all these stars, billions of them just in our own galaxy. And then, there are billions of galaxies. The sky is filled with them in whichever direction we care to look.

However minute the chances for life to emerge may be, in the end, those staggering number of stars, the energy givers with thermonuclear fusion keeping their bellies warm, can easily overcome miniscule probabilities for the chance of developing self-replicating molecules to materialize.

After all, fed by the energy from the Sun, life emerged on the Earth. If it can happen here, under the right circumstances, it can happen elsewhere too. We are not a product of exceptionalism.

So why have we not been visited by aliens yet? Aliens who might have had a much longer time to evolve and had the time to figure out how to travel through vast distances within a manageable time.

Within the last 100 years, human discovery and technological capability has progressed at a stunning pace. With that in mind, imagine what a civilization with a head start of 100,000 years under its belt would be capable of.

In 100 years we have developed advanced technologies, have mapped the human genome, understood the basics of the physical laws and beginnings of the universe, built computers that can look into the future and tell us the weather five days from now (not to mention, Facebook, Instagram, Alexa, and TikTok!), so imagine what wonders 100,000 more years of technological development can bring.

Heck, I do not even remember what I used to do merely 35 years back when laptops and the internet were not around.

Maybe a simple reason for not meeting the aliens is that distances between islands of life scattered around stars and galaxies are just too vast for technologies or physical laws to overcome. The distances ensure that once an island we will always be an island.

Distances aside, there could be another possibility. One possibility, if considered, may be a more elegant and natural explanation to the riddle: a sufficiently advanced civilization, unless it overcomes the innate traits shaped by the nuances of evolution, is destined to self-destruct.

The trigger for self-destruction might be built in the basic constructs of evolution.

Life itself is a chemical process and the universe has plenty of them to offer for randomness to play the game of mix and match. And play it does. Chance happenings of favorable chemical bonds lead to more and more complex molecules.

One day, some of those molecules discover the magic of self-replication. Given a source of energy, and if there is no competition, the same molecules will replicate without bound to the extent that is limited by the energy source. It will be a monochromatic world.

Nature, however, is more colorful. The randomness that made those molecules possible also ensures that they will have adequate competition and the successful will have to constantly watch their backs.

Even if there is no competing family of molecules wanting to grab the same resources, the invisible power of randomness will create variations within, leading to various sub-classes. Some better and some worse.

The better ones will be more adept at replicating and consuming energy and begin to dominate. The less unfortunate will either perish or find a niche and withdraw into their own little part of the universe.

Dictated by randomness, the basic rules governing evolution emerge.

Given a mix of a source of energy ready to be consumed and a class of self-replicating molecules, randomness leading to chance mutations creates less or more efficient molecules, setting the stage for natural selection.

The consequence is the start of epic battles for consuming and garnering resources that have continued to date. Battles that were either played out among different species or among different sub-classes of the same species.

If you don’t believe it, just look around, or listen to 10-minutes of the evening news, or skim the headlines of the Washington Post. The underside of all stories considered newsworthy is a story of struggle between classes.

Starting from humble beginnings and shaped by evolution and underlying laws of natural selection, we have reached the present to be what we are now. Our genes, our biological and psychological thought processes are all shaped by the pressures, and opportunities, in the surrounding environment in which our ancestors lived. In a way, we are an integral of history, and if we survive. that integral is positive.

The innate traits developed along the way, which helped us survive and get progressively better, are still with us. The rush of adrenaline when we hear a creaking noise in the middle of night, the fear of snakes, the sweet tooth, our attraction to vistas so we can spot a cheetah from miles away.

The list of innate biological and psychological traits that we carry and are shaped by the environment is endless. A result of the sweeping arms of natural selection that has touched everything.

Somewhere along the way, however, we broke away from the pack. Within the last ten thousand years or so, (a tiny blip compared to cosmic and geological time scales on which the outcomes of natural selection are shaped) through technological advances that were initially slow, but always advancing at an exponential pace, we have attained an apparent capability to defy evolution.

With climate control offered by heating or cooling, we no longer have to worry about adapting to warm or cold weather. Before flying to Rovaniemi, Finland, a place inside the Arctic Circle, I did not give a second thought to how I am going to survive there in the middle of February. I no longer have to act like the squirrels running in my backyard, who during the Fall go through a frenzied activity of burying something.

Outward appearances of breaking free from the chains of natural selection, however, could be deceiving. The same ten thousand years that have endowed us with tremendous capabilities, both constructive and destructive, yet are not long enough for our innate traits of tribalism to adjust to the different environment, have given us a different paradigm in which we now exist.

We may no longer have to worry about tigers, snakes, famines, extreme cold, but we still carry the basic traits and reactions that were shaped by those environmental pressures. We may no longer have to compete for resources across species, but we now carry the battles within the subclasses of our own species.

Now the battles play out between rich and poor, between nations, between people of different colors, between individuals with different mindsets or religions or races or histories or sexual orientation.

The basic tenets of natural selection continue to thrive but now the ‘competition’ live next door.

Although the pace of technological advances has far outpaced that at which most biological and psychological traits evolve, we continue to be governed by the traits with which we evolved.

Genetics still haunts us. We may no longer be shackled by the subtle laws of natural selection, and may feel proud to have overcome nature, however, nature still rules. All we need to do is to look into our pantries or the maze of shelves of a grocery store and the food choices we make.

It is not an accident that we are hooked on sugar.

Holding on to the traits that gave us an edge during evolution is a dangerous mix when combined with technological capabilities we now have. The same psychological traits could become an impediment to our survival.

Armed with dangerous weapons while holding on to tribalism in an inevitable fight for decreasing natural resources is a dangerous mix.

Looking at the beautiful night sky, I start to wonder: Can a sufficiently advanced civilization evolve the wisdom to free itself from the traits that proved advantageous during evolution and adapt to a world that is no longer governed by the pressures of evolution?

How long will it take for our genes to evolve to the new paradigm of no longer being shaped by the guardrails imposed by needing to not load up on sugar?

But then again, are we actually in a new evolutionary paradigm in which the traditional rules of evolution do not apply? The feeling that we are free from the tenets of evolution is likely just a mirage. The guardrails of evolution are still there; it is just that the players in the fight for resources are different.

Evolution, ultimately, is a fight for limited resources. If the resources were unlimited, then maybe all can live happily ever after in harmony. The world, instead of feeling like it is always on the verge of dystopia, will be a utopian dream.

Previously the fight may have been between different species and that paradigm may no longer exist. It does not mean that the fight for resources is over. The fight for resources, now has now shifted to within Homo Sapiens. (With little regard for the essential role of biodiversity in the natural world, I might add.  But that’s a topic for a future post.)

The fight for resources is now between the nations, it is between rich and poor, it is between freedom and dictatorship, it is between democrats and republicans, it is between haves and have nots.

And within the fight for freedom, the conflict is between liberals and moderates. The fight for resources has a fractal quality to it; every segment looks like its larger version.

The fight is now between us when we rush through the door of the Walmart on Black Friday, and like hyenas, grab on the ends of a box of a 64” flat screen TV. We think that our survival depends on being victorious and bringing that TV home, mistakenly believing that it will nourish our souls.

In a world that is teeming with disparity, the fight for natural resources will always be inevitable. And with randomness governing personal destinies, uniformity as a natural state is a statistical impossibility. No matter how much time we give, uniformity is not going to happen.

These days the game of evolution plays out on the grander scale and is for different resources – oil, precious metals, the Arctic shipping routes in the world of decreasing sea ice, minerals at the bottom of the sea, who is going to claim the rights for the desolate piece of wasteland on the dark side of the moon.

Hanging on to the traits that made us successful, and the process of evolution that shaped the advent of intelligent beings, will ultimately be the demise of a sufficiently advanced civilization that has acquired means to build a Death Star to annihilate millions with the push of a button.

In the end, the slate will be wiped clean, and life will begin again with molecules elbowing each other for -- you guessed it -- resources.

That may be the reason why we have not been visited by aliens yet. A civilization that may be capable of warp travel, or can control wormholes, will not be able to grow out of its increasing need for resources. In the end, some faction will press the button, and the mushroom cloud will lead to destruction.

We can hang on the utopian dream that a council of wise people will rein in our base tendencies, and we can avoid extinction. We may think that Spock will be our savior, but we may not be able to shake the Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

Is dystopia a natural state, and utopia, well, a dream?

Or one day, we all will be inserted with a chip that will wipe out any thoughts of being different, and we will live in the world of the Matrix. But then, the fight may shift to between the Fugaku and Selene to find more human cells to power their hunger.

Whether we will become wise I do not know; we do not know. We can ask the aliens who never visited us. Or that we cannot ask them may be telling in that a sufficiently advanced civilization at some point wipes the slate clean and resets the process of evolution back to its humble beginnings.

I look again at the night sky and wonder if we will manage to really defy the laws that are shaped by our desire to corner a limited availability of resources. My time is limited, and I may never know the answer.

Or maybe, given the 13.8 billion of history and looking back, we already have the answer to why aliens have not visited us.

Time is a great healer. It could also be a great destroyer. Time graciously lends us all the “time” we need to build the Death Star that one day will ensure our destruction.

It is a plausible scenario. But cheer up, it is extremely unlikely to happen today.

It is an exceptional time to be proud of American exceptionalism

 

American Exceptionalism!

The dictionary tells that Exceptionalism is “the condition of being different from the norm.” That sounds innocuous and acceptable.

The opening of the Wiki sentence on the American Exceptionalism states it “is the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations.”

One of our exceptional politicians, in the wake of 21 lives lost in Uvalde, Texas, population 15,217, tells a British reporter “I'm sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful.” His words of wisdom were truly exceptional.

Maybe somewhere inside, he is proud of the fact that a steady trickle of mass shootings should be a fact of American psyche and is one of the torches of American exceptionalism. It is what makes us stand out among other nations. We’re Number One! We’re Number One!

We are indeed exceptional in that we cannot mandate wearing masks to tame the beast of the pandemic, but we can mandate that women (an exceptionally large 50% of American society) cannot make choices about their bodies and future.

We are exceptional that we can push for an anti-abortion attitude, but once the child comes to this world, do not care about providing social support for its well-being and development.

All said and done, given the resources we have, the ingenuity we have, the exceptional talent we attract, and things we have achieved as a nation, we are also exceptional in carrying on with our stupidity.

We are exceptional that we can elect an exceptionally gifted leader in 2016.

We are exceptional that 7% us believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

Long live American Exceptionalism.

We can sing at the altar of American Exceptionalism some more, but right now I have to spend an entire month to figure out the nuances of Medicare and calm the gnawing feeling that I may not be making the right decision and it will come back to haunt me when I am 80.

If you have a moment don’t miss this example of American exceptionalism.

The Joy of Functional Spaces (and there is no place like home)

 Arun Kumar

Photo by Nathan Oakley on Unsplash

Every five minutes I squirm around but don’t seem to get comfortable. The depth of the sofa is 25”, and for short people like me, legs dangle in the air. I feel like a child living in spaces made for adults. 

A Gulliver in the land of Giants. I am at a friend’s house, but they definitely are not the Giants. My hosts also have the same build as mine.

When traveling and staying in hotels or enjoying the hospitality in the home of a kindred soul, the contour of spaces sometimes do not conform with the curves of my body.  When away from home, occasionally finding functional spaces that invite the body to sink in, relax, and give an audible sigh of relief, comes as a pleasant surprise.

Functional spaces (or the spaces that are functional) that bring the comfort and safety of a mother's womb, are a precious gift, and a sense of wellbeing, to strive for.

At home, when I get up in the morning and have my first cup of Earl Grey, things around me magically morph to fit my mind and body. The size of the teacup, and its shape, is just right for my palms to wrap around and feel the pleasant warmth on cold wintery mornings. The sofa chair I sit on is just right for the length of my legs as my back sinks in the comfort of its cushions. Sitting next to me is a side table within easy reach to place the teacup.

It all feels just perfect as if over the millions of years, evolution has shaped everything to fit flawlessly.

I am reminded of all this while staying in someone’s place when after a few days I start to miss the comforts of home. The hosts are wonderful and loving people and I have always enjoyed their company. Their set up of living spaces, however, leaves something to be desired, at least for me.

Our hosts are my height and while sitting on the end of the sofa, their feet dangle in the midair also. Their work around to regain some sense of comfort is to put another cushion behind their back to prop themselves forward. It is something that just does not work for me.

In the morning right away I miss not having a side table. It feels irksome having to lean forward and put the cup back on the coffee table (which is heavy enough that it cannot be dragged easily on the wooden floor without being in the danger of leaving marks).

After a short break, I lean forward again to pick up the teacup, take a couple of sips and lean forward to put it back on the table. The cycle of discomfort repeats.

Later comes suppertime and we sit on a dining table with highchairs, and I am reminded of the same discomfort that started the day. My feet dangle in the air, the slates on the wooden chair, and gaps between them, do not please my derriere. The chair and my bottom are locked in a silent tug of war to find the sweet spot.

The story, in different contexts, repeats throughout the day. After a while I start to think, are they doing this because they are falling prey to their desire to conform with the current home furnishings trends, or they just have some masochistic desires that I never learned about. If it is the latter, I should lock the door at the end of the day when I step into the bed.

By the way, to get into the bed makes me wish I had brought my step ladder so I can climb into bed without the fear of falling. The height of the bed can make Mount Kilimanjaro envious.

A stack of old issues of Architectural Digest on the coffee table makes me think that the real reason their home does not feel like a functional space is that they have succumbed to the disinfected norms of magazine living, and what they see repeated in the houses of their friends. And since it sells, similar sofas stock the floor space in the furniture stores, while to find comfort, you have to hunt online stores.

My friends fell prey to living by other people’s rules. In the end, everyone is following one another and lives in a background of conformal discomfort.

When nature calls, it is time for head for the toilet and I immediately miss the trust of my squatty potty, and afterwards, the cleanliness of using the bidet, My bowel movement is not a happy song as they generally are, and my derriere, once again, makes a pouty face (at least, I think it does).

Interestingly, I note how many aspects of a functional space are connected with my bottom. It makes sense, almost all day we are using its support in one way or another. I am also reminded of the story I read long ago about different body parts arguing who is more important. The bowel says to the heart, the liver etc. that if I stop functioning properly then, you all, my dears, will be down on your knees. Or maybe it actually was a story about an anal boss and my memory is playing a trick.

Oh well, enough about the derriere. I know thy comfort is important and I bow to your wishes.

Slowly hours tick by and during pleasant conversations and a wonderful meal, I keep shifting myself to try to fit contours of my body to the shapes it is presented and find some comfort. I am not succeeding too well.

I begin to daydream that inanimate objects around me are slowly morphing and molding to fit the shapes of my body, and with a deep sigh of comfort, I sink into their embrace.

Now I know what it means to say that there is no place like home. Home is a long evolution towards perfecting our functional space. And it is to that space that after some time being in travels, we wish to return to, particularly, as you get older, and aches and pains grace us easily.

I wish everyone the joy of functional places. Life is too short to spend shifting around constantly on the sofa trying to find the sweet spot that is not there.

Next time when you are at the airport and you see someone standing at the airline counter checking in a side table, a squatty potty, and a bidet, come and say hello. That will be me.

Peace.