The things people said …

…that made an impression on me.

On the one hand, it has been a while since I put out pithy statements that impressed me as I read them and have failed to share them. On the other, recently I am finding it difficult to hone in on topics to post on, even given it is election time. I am running dry. Therefore, I have resorted to connect these two to create a post from out of the blue. The way I see it, half a dozen such statements and my personal analysis of them will get me to a post of decent length. Here I go.

·         ‘Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable’ - Clare Boothe Luce

I was really taken aback by this observation that validates why we need money. What is the point of being uncomfortable and miserable? This took me to some party scenes where the inebriated used to justify taking to the wheels even while obviously drunk, “I am OK; I have had a mug of coffee and I am very awake! Don’t worry.” What that idiot does not know is that with coffee inside, one is awake but still drunk; this is the equivalent of being comfortable yet miserable! Money is like a cup of coffee that keeps you awake (being awfully comfortable) but does not let you realize you are drunk (being miserable).

·         ‘All good science emerges from an imaginative conception of what might be true’ – Peter Medawar

I love this understanding of origin of science, in one’s imagination. But, your imagination has to be validated by hard work. That is, science is far from a dry subject. Aristotle imagined that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Then came along Galileo and with a simple thought experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo's_Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa_experiment) proved that it cannot be. What Aristotle imagined Galileo unimagined first, and then reimagined it. The scientists had to imagine an infinitely dense yet point source of energy to come up with the theory of Big Bang. They had to imagine a tree of life to explain why so many different forms of life on the planet. On and on. In the imagining department scientists, artists, poets, sculptors et all are peers.

·         ‘There are some people whom it is one’s duty to annoy’ – Lord Reith

How one understands this statement depends on the context in which it was uttered. I read this in a book by a scientist working in the field of brain science and cognition. The context was the book that is replete with speculations, some more or less validated, some being acceptably investigated and some from way out in the left field. The author was justifying his forays into speculation and taking a dig at his peers who do not see eye to eye with him. He positions himself as the intrepid researcher who dares to go where no one has gone. While I have nothing to say how the statement was used, I am not sure this was how it was used originally. This is somewhat disconcerting to me. What did Lord Reith have in mind when he uttered these words? That is of interest to me.

·         ‘Nothing without understanding would ever be more beauteous than with understanding…’ – Plato

I went Whoa! when I read this, said more than two millennia ago. I repeatedly say this to my juniors in my office who use some tailor-made software to do analysis of civil engineering structures. They come out with colorful diagrams that can be scaled up or down, rotated, from which micro-details can be extracted etc. “Whatever you need, we have it here,” they say. They are smug that aircraft has been landed and taxied successfully to the gate. Unfortunately, at times they fail to land their plane smoothly, overshooting the runway. They are clueless as to why things went wrong and how much more wrong they could have gone (remember the Mangalore airport accident of some years ago). I argue that the beauty of the software is in understanding it, going beyond its mere utility. So, this saying of Plato comforts me and gives me confidence.

·         ‘Beware the fury of a patient man’ – John Dryden

This was said in the context of how the Indian public could be taken for a ride only this far and not farther. A severe backlash is in the offing, in the upcoming elections. I only wish this were true. The fact is you cannot pin the blame on the extant conditions on any one entity, be it a party, say the Congress, the political executive, the bureaucracy across all levels, the corporates at whatever level, and of course, the public itself. My doctor told me that sugar level in blood cannot be taken lightly. As blood pervades all the organs of the body, any and all those can be affected if the sugar level is allowed to run amok. The corruption, including the indignities, of the Indian system, likewise, pervades all of the polity and to expect quick-fixes, like changing of a party is to live in a fool’s paradise. A patient man has to be patient to cure the system top to bottom. No fury would help, AAP notwithstanding.

·         ‘In public as well as in private expenses, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly’ – Adam Smith

There are many such sharp statements in Adam Smith’s book Wealth of Nations but hardly ever we hear of them. There may be reasons for it. For one, they may undermine unthinking worship of Lord Kuber / Mammon. The one phrase we keep hearing is “the invisible hand”, to mean individual’s self-interest. So I ask, is it the self-interest of Mukesh Ambani that gave us the Antilia monstrosity in Mumbai? Not to be outdone, Lakshmi Mittal has his own sprawling mansions across the world, including within the square mile that calls itself the City of London. In public expense, we see the Mumbai Monorail as nothing more than the symbol to proclaim we-did-it-first, the self-interest of the powers that be. With its meagre capacity it would do zilch to cater to the traffic demands along the short corridor, at great expense. These are the apologies for “great folly” that Adam Smith warned us against.

I promised six at the beginning and I end here, this instalment.

Raghuram Ekambaram