Ich konsumiere, also bin ich!

Take 1:  Ich konsumiere, also bin ich. 

One of my best friends from high school (now based in Berlin) pinged me last week on Linkedin. We haven’t spoken in more than a decade! In the message, he wrote “I’m quitting my job soon and reevaluating lot of things.” 

Now quitting job is very common (and kind of expected!) today, but what felt even more interesting and valuable was “reevaluating lot of things”. 

Indeed, I suppose life finds its unique ways to throw in front of us moments and pose to us questions, which ask us to “reevaluate a lot of things”. :)  

He gave me his number and asked to ping me if I would like to speak. As I did that, I was struck by his satirical whatsapp status – 

I reached out to Google Translate.  

“I consume, therefore I am.”

Just five words. 

Just five words, but they so piercingly describe so much of what’s going on in our lives today. I was stunned into silence.  

(I Consume, Therefore I am! Sculpture by Sergio Burcialo. Available for purchase for INR 1,11,030 only here. Shipping included, with 7-day money-back guarantee.) 

It is becoming clear to most of us that a life organized around maximizing consuming and accumulating things and experiences is not really taking us far.  

But there is an (unfortunate) corollary to this theorem, which bothers me more. It’s other side. 

Here is what I mean —

Now for every consumer, there ought to be a producer. While too much consumption most of us are coming to regard as unhealthy, too much production (both physical goods and virtual “attentional” goods): is still widely regarded as a badge of honor on linkedin. :) 

And on website homepages. 

So the corollary is: “I make others consume, therefore I am.”   

As I wrote this, I suddenly remembered some screenshots I had taken couple years ago with great disbelief. 

Footwear boxes along the trail of Mt. Everest. That is a visual you can’t forget. Full marks to the campaign director for creativity. 

But quite a sorry visual too. I am imagining all these shoes actually being thrown away after six months (which by the way, is the average usage span of all stuff that is produced today in the world, before being dumped) onto the path to Everest. Thirty times over. That’s why it’s aptly titled “Madness Report”. 

We all need mobile phones and shoes, and work-from-home desks. But somewhere along the way, when we started to pat each other on the backs for lining up shoes up to Mt. Everest, we lost our way.  

It’s hard to understand how we can still think that selling stuff to others as the dominant, most commonly considered marker of our intelligence. I don’t think Maslow had GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) or MAUs (Monthly Active Users) in mind at all when he was inviting us to dream about “self-actualization”.      

I’ve often wondered how we got so invested in this consumption story all over the world. Couple years ago, at a business+transformation pod we were hosting, I came across this documentary “Century of Self”. Here is a 12min clip from the film. The heroes of the story - Sigmund Freud, his nephew and not surprisingly, some investment bankers and consultants.  

So that’s how were lit, the “Torches of Freedom”. The clip ends with these words-

“In 1927 an American journalist wrote: A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumption-ism. The American citizen's first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer.” 

And in Berlin, my friend’s whatsapp reads — “Ich konsumiere, also bin ich.” I consume, therefore I am. 

Take 2:  Cogito Ergo Sum 

From 1927, we will need to go back to 1637. From Edward Bernays to Descartes, who famously said “I think, therefore I am.” 

Google suggests that we have 6,000 thoughts each day. Typically, 80% of our thoughts are negative. And this was new for me. And MINDBOGGLING –- 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. WOW! 

Imagine asking a junior at office for an update on the project. 

What if he forces you to hear the same update twenty times? 

Our minds seem to be like that. 

So only 1% (5% unique thoughts * 20% positive) of our thoughts are kind of productive. 99% is unproductive or unproductive and detrimental. We talk about efficiency in optimizing the external environment, but what about inner efficiency? 

As a finance guy, I often smirk at those youtube ads of new-age money advisers who tend to talk like life coaches. In a bass voice and artificially loud body language, they tell you about the hidden power of compounding and tell you to start investing in Mutual Funds early in your life. 

But no one is talking about the crazy compounding of the scarcity mindset when we constantly keep looking for more profits.

I just did some numbers. If you have one negative thought per day (let’s call it the “SIP Amount”), and if that even just increases your belief in that thought by 0.1% (“Rate of return”) per thought. Then in one year, you would have strengthened your original belief of scarcity by 44%. That’s quite consequential. One way to look at it is that unless your income grows by 44% or more, you will feel poorer at the end of the year.  

In 5 years, you would have strengthened that belief 6 times. (No financial instruments can make you rich at the rate your mind is making you poor).  

From the day you are born, till age 25 (early age when you might graduate b-school), if you’ve been conditioning yourself to want be better than others, to be on top, you’ve compounded this tendency 9,140 times. Chances are high, we spend rest of our lives stuck in what is known as a “self-esteem trap” just trying to be better than others, than living life.  Unless, we “re-evaluate a lot of things”   

In an Awakin Talk, Nipun Mehta once shared this mind-bending quote by Stephen Levine.  

We never really experience what negative events happen to us in life. What we experience is actually our crazily compounded repetition of the same. And that repetition is usually a good deal more painful than the original negativity.  

From that sort of negative mind, our solutions whether in personal, social or professional domains - also tend to be destructive. Bill O Brien, CEO of Hanover Insurance very intelligently said “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”

When everyone is secretly just wanting to achieve more, no wonder the world is in such a subversive mess today. That more than half of AI researchers think that there is more than a 10% chance that AI will lead to permanent wiping out of humanity.   

Also, the day before I wrote about that what seems like “analytical thinking” – instead of removing our biases, it often ends up compounding our misconceptions. 

I remember I was on a call with a few friends a couple of years ago reflecting on the “difference between money and wealth”. One of them is perhaps among the youngest in the country to become a partner in a top consulting firm. He shared something quite telling. He said, “When we were graduating undergrad together, I had a clear hypothesis of what would make me happy. Today, I have ticked all those boxes. But I have come to realize that my hypothesis was wrong.” And then what he added something that was even more intriguing “But what could be a new hypothesis of happiness – I don’t know.”

Our erosion of “inner wealth” due to unexamined patterns of our mind, most often tends to be greater than growth in “outer wealth”. That’s why despite the fact that we have so much more today externally, most of us feel unhappier than say when we were in undergrad. 

But till we aren’t really tuned into the internal equations, it will be really hard to be able to build a new out-of-the-box hypothesis.

This is something I hope we pay attention to, when we are at those stages when we are “reevaluating a lot of things.” It reminds me of Einstein’s quote – “Problems can not be solved from same level of consciousness that created it.” In other words, as a friend once reframed it, the real problems of life can not be solved by thinking. Period.  

Jon Bernie puts it in a rather humbling way. We all know the phrase “running around like a headless chicken”. He says what describes us more accurately today is “running around like a chickenless head”. Totally disconnected from the obvious realities of life, totally subsumed in the crazy stories that our minds are telling us.  

I overthink, and therefore, I am not. “Cogito ergo non-sum.” 

Final Frontier: I care, therefore I am.  

The credit again goes to Jayesh bhai for this. And to the indigenous folks in Africa. 

Ubuntu. “I am, because we are.”

One day, I was on a call with few folks from our college IIMB. Some of them were working in the corporate roles, some had started to work in the non-profit sector. We were discussing a lot of things that I don’t remember well, but one thing i remember very clearly. 

One of the participants, asked a question to the group: “Do you think for-profit structures are better or non-profit structures are better, for solving societal problems? I like for-profit structures more.” 

Everyone had their own preferences. Then I had to speak. Actually, I was in a way taken aback and was feeling a bit disturbed by the question. Outer structures are only a mirror of our inner structures. I shared with the group that we really need to ask ourselves why we are asking that question. 

Mixed with the external motivation of solving societal problems, can be our internal confusion of greed, of feeling disconnected from others. 

Whatever be the structure, that’s a secondary question. 

But if we are trying to hide under our structures to have an excuse to not cultivate compassion for people whom our work touches – then isn’t that is a much bigger problem in itself?  

Shouldn’t compassion be a non-negotiable goal, as opposed to extraction, indifference and even sympathy? Shouldn’t compassion be a basic learning outcome, in a world where how we behave so profoundly affects people around us? We taught ourselves math and language as we knew it is needed for surviving in this world, that way, can’t we all put the basic efforts to learn compassion? Dalai Lama summed it up very nicely in a sentence “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

And the great news is it is not even as such to be taught. It is natural to us. We just have to clean up the dust of the competitive culture which has settled in our consciousness.    

Once we have that work, whether our organization is for-profit or non-profit, all places can be places of healing, places of helping; rather than creating subversive new challenges for humanity, which we are all struggling to find answers to.         

Adam Smith, the Father of modern economics, gave the famous metaphor of the “invisible hand.” We think price and demand matching in the markets was the invisible hand that Smith was referring to. But he was actually referring to a much deeper conscience that he believed should guide our behaviour. In his conveniently ignored book “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, he wrote 

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Buddhists might call this “interest in others’ happiness” Mudita. He went on to describe it further – 

It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.

“A voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions” – Such a clear statement that caring for others without seeking any return is stronger than our consumeristic instinct. 

Descartes also actually wasn’t per se a fan of the thinking process. He knew that thoughts are very deceptive. Twenty-five years after he wrote his treatise of critical thinking, he effectively reframed himself “I regard with compassion, therefore I am.” 

Couple of weeks ago, I was invited to IIM-Ranchi to talk to their students of IPM Batch (5-year integrated Bachelor + Master’s program). The host Prof. Gaurav shared a very generous introduction to my academic and corporate achievements. As I stood in front, in the auditorium, I saw the young students’ reactions of amazement. 

One of my inspiring friends, Sharva Kant, also from IIMB had also come with me. 

I was thinking of opening with a joke about our egos, but instead I opened with a small story Sharva had told me couple weeks ago. I told them that you heard so many of my achievements. But let me tell you what I think my greatest achievement is. So here goes the story —  

Two weeks ago, Sharva and I met, after 8 years at a nearby cafe. While we were entering, we bumped into couple other mates from high school. After a brief chat with them, we went inside and found our separate table. 

Meeting those two folks reminded him of a story from his childhood days. As soon as two of us sat inside, he started sharing a story of a boy who used to come for FIITJEE coaching, where Sharva also used to go. That boy was very socially anxious. On top of that, he had recently lost a parent. That further had strongly increased his anxiety. He was obviously in a lot of pain.  

Sharva said that most of our friends in the coaching, they used to make fun of him. Call him names. Bully him. 

But just by nature, he wasn’t like them. 

He used to even talk to him nicely once in a while. 

“I kept tracking his journey after school. I know he has graduated college, and found a good job.  

But I’m tearing up as I think of him, now, twenty years later. 

I was never unkind to him. I was better than almost everyone there. But I’m tearing up thinking that what was preventing me from being more kinder to him?”   

….

I told these young students, that like Sharva, tearing up at a stranger’s pain is by far the greatest achievement that has come in my life. 

Sharva has cracked IIM-B, crazily overperformed at his job. He left that and founded a startup to help elderly people across the world take care of themselves better. But beyond all those big things, his deepest yearning expressed itself in his wish to be kinder in the small, ordinary moments in life. 

We are so caught in our consumption, in our distorted thoughts of scarcity and separation; that we completely miss the profound opportunities of sacred connection in the present moment. Our actualization doesn’t lie in reaching some imagined impact numbers, but perhaps in the simple practice of being sensitive to life around us, in the present moment, in small ways. Like MLK Jr. elegantly said

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” 

A lot more can be said, but for now, I think we can pause this inquiry, with a short story. I saw it recently on an Interfaith compassion pod, hosted by Servicespace. It is a story of a Jewish boy who grew up in United States and his visit to Poland. And his great-grandparents who were prisoners in the concentration camp. To me, this story symbolizes the spirit of Ubuntu. 

As Rabbi Ariel Burger closes, “If we knew how to activate the moral centers of compassion and courage of human beings, wouldn’t our world look different?” 

I am also asking, what would the world look like, if we can ground our existence not in consumption, not in mere contemplation, but in courageous compassionate action?

“I care therefore I am.”