Tag / meaning

by Ajinkya Pawar

2021. The Year of Humanity’s Burn Out.

One of the defining experiences of the pandemic has been the constant anxiety grating at our conscience, not letting us recharge completely – the burnout. The overwhelmed medical fraternity experienced it. So did the migrant workers orphaned from the mai-baap sarkaar. The anxious and overworked security guard felt it. So did the digital worker straining his will along the extended hours of zoom calls. The overworked workers felt it who were saddled with extra workload of all the others who had been fired (sometimes opportunistically to improve short-term margins). So did the unemployed who were truly ‘full time’ occupied with the efforts, concerns, fears and preparations of getting a job/ making a living. Kids felt it who couldn’t go out to play nor could afford quality digital education. So did the women who lost their jobs, were saddled with double the household responsibilities than normal and had to run their uniquely dysfunctional homes even as the regular support systems evaporated.

2021 is truly the year of burn out.

A role to play

We must make sense of our lives. Without the anchor of ‘meaning’, we suffer an existential seasickness as we float uncertainly in the ocean of possibilities. The pandemic tsunami tore at the foundations of our indentity. Who are we if we are not working/ pubbing/ travelling/ minting money…?
Without someone else to tell me/ buy from me/ look at me/ yell at me, do I even matter?
stock market is up, billionaires are in space, acquaintances have been promoted… I MUST be doing something terribly wrong!?

Routines and habits

For many of us, as we retreated into our shells, we lost our rhythm. We realise that the rhythm is not set by us. It is set by the sun, by the weather, by the people around us, by our roles, by our surrounding. As we retreat from them all, we lose our rhythm. Day segues in night. Minutes into hours into weeks. The weight of all the things not-done weighs heavily on our conscience and makes it even harder to return to that rhythm of the previous principled life. Without rhythm, there’s no recuperation, no action, no meaningful progress. There’s just stasis, a hibernation without rest.

The blurred boundary

Public and private; as video calls seeped into our homes and soaked up all its grimy details.
Night and day; as we retreated from the natural world.
Digital and real; as we doomscrolled and revenge-shopped and daydreamed with an existential urgency.
Appropriate and inappropriate; as social mores had to be invented for a new reality of video calls.
Reality and unreality; as we lost our bearings about our place in the world, about our thesis of the world, about trust in our leaders.

Things we mistake/ conflate with freedom

Capitalism taught us HOW to desire, how to socialise, how to express one’s freedom.
Outdoors, SUVs, Drinking without abandon, Eating-out, parties, travelling obsessively, Drinking unhealthy colas, eating shitty burgers, Buying new clothes…. Are we free if we are not doing these things?
People tried to answer that question by buying things, experiences online. Only to discover that buying is a cheap, unsatisfying substitute to what those things actually were only a means to. We misunderstood symbols for the real things. We discovered that there are two kinds of people – one for whom the symbols are enough and that they live in that metaverse. And the other who realised the distinction.

The uncertainty

Cascading uncertainties. Climate change. inequality. fast pace of change with technology and pandemic fuelled new orientation of markets.
There is no certainty in the meta-narratives with these big changes happening around us.
There is no certainty in the micro-narratives of our own little bubbles. the changes are very visibly altering our lives.
The uncertainty, that until now lurked at the edge of our conscience, has taken a solid and heavy presence in our psyche. It is here to stay.

by Ajinkya Pawar

“Insights” as revelations of hidden optionalities

As the world moves faster and drags the advertising industry along with it, the concept of ‘insight’, which resolutely stood at the centre of the advertising industry for long, is appearing blurred.

Often, we find ourselves in meeting rooms sharing a scratch of the head, “what’s an insight, anyways?”. Here’s my take.

What is an insight?

Firstly, when we talk about insights, we are talking with the purpose of effective inception – an ‘a ha’ moment to convince someone of something. (Unlike insight in literature or art where the only subjectivity that matters is that of the creators. And therefore, advertising is not art.)
It is purposive.
It seeks a response/ influence.
It requires an ‘other’ to incept in.
An insight that cannot trigger response is not useful.

Secondly, insight is relative. What is insightful to me might not be insightful for you. What is insightful for me now might not be insightful for me when I am older.

Thirdly, insight illuminates the beyond. People don’t find what they know, insightful. So, the playground of insight starts beyond their knowledge, their feelings, their experiences.  

Simply put, I find something insightful if it was something that I didn’t know before.
I find something exhilarating if I had not experienced it before.
I feel I have grown, only after experiencing something, often a failure, that makes me reassess my previously held beliefs.

Insights push the boundaries of knowledge, feeling, being.

To create an ‘a ha’ moment, we need to drive the person right beyond the edge of his knowledge, his beliefs, his perspectives.

So, it is not enough to know what your consumer knows, feels, believes in. We need to know what the limits of those ideas in their mind and heart are. We need a humanist perspective to expand their boundaries of tolerance, beliefs, knowledge (which is relevant to the brand in question).

Insights as the revelation of a hidden option

A precise purpose of the ‘insight’ then is to convince the consumer to push their boundary; to step beyond their normal; to step beyond their range of feelings. An insight makes an option accessible, that they didn’t know of, or couldn’t access, or didn’t think they deserve it.

An insight is an invitation and encouragement to expand the boundaries of our lives. It propels us to seize an opportunity hidden to us for so long.

by Ajinkya Pawar

The gulf between rating systems and reality

Here’s the rating system used by Car servicing centers –

1-4 -unacceptable
5-7 – average
8-9 – Good
10 – Excellent

Once, after getting my car serviced from Hyundai, I gave an 8 rating… I got a call later from the service center asking to please improve the rating otherwise they would face trouble. they needed a 9 or 10.
I was astonished. Scoring 60% in school was ‘good’. scoring anything above 70% was a cause for celebrations. And here I had a panicking executive worried about getting a low score of 80%!

Then I remembered the JD Power awards! Companies have rigged their rating systems to pull themselves higher in the awards schema. But since everyone does that now, the advantage is gone and we are left with a nonsensical scale.

Here’s the rating system on swiggy

1 star – aargh!
2 star – Bad
3 star – Meh
4 star – Good
5 star – Loved it

If ola driver or swiggy delivery person does what he/she is supposed to do, I give a 5. i started doing that because i heard getting anything below 4 gets them in trouble. A friend of mine, as a customer, can’t use uber anymore. apparently, because her ratings have gone below 4! again 80%! I would have killed to consistently get 80% marks in my school/ college.

Here’s the rating system for appraisal in some companies.

1 – Did not meet expectations (Performed considerably below the required expectations. Definite improvement is needed)
2 – Partially met expectations (Performed slightly below expectations and achieved goals partially. Needs to focus on some areas and improve through consistent effort)
3 – Successfully met expectations (Performed on-target and met all expectations and goals. Achieved 100% of target)
4 – Exceeded expectations (Surpassed all expectations and goals. Achieved >100% and <110% of target)
5 – Far exceeded expectations (Surpassed all expectations and goals and is a role model of excellence to others. Achieved >110% of target)

After working hard, successfully meeting expectation, you get a 3! does that feel justified? does the scale seem a bit wonky?

I remember another company where the 100% expectation meeting was at 4, somewhat reasonable i would think. But even then, should it actually be at 5? we should be evaluated against what was expected. full marks for what was expected. for extra efforts, give extra! if you expect everyone to be a superstar, you are setting up everyone for a failure.

It seems as if the rating system has been rigged to bring down the worker’s ratings to justify low raises?

Obviously these rating systems matter. But should they?

some scales are linear, some are weighted at an end, some are exponential… reading any of these ratings would require an understanding of the context, and consequently fighting against that context.

ratings are just another battle ground where different interest groups rig the system for their benefit.

as such, ratings do not communicate the quality of experience/ work etc at all. they simply communicate the power dynamic.

by Ajinkya Pawar

Re-branding: Postmodernism

We need a better word for ‘postmodernism’.

Why does it matter?

Understanding Postmodernism can help us understand the world we live in today and the forces shaping humanity. So in that sense, it is a powerful concept. Yet, because the word used to describe it is a mixture of two very broad concepts – post and modernism, it ends up confusing people more than it clarifies.

So if it is post something, what has already transpired? What was the cause if this is the effect? Is it a linear progression of events?

What is modern?  Wouldn’t anything that is ‘now’, be modern? So postmodern is the future? But then why are ‘modern arts’ almost a century old? Why do we still have modernist artists, postmodernist artists? How can they exist at the same time? Schrodinger’s cat?

You see why effective branding is important. Wouldn’t it have been better if modernism was called something else, something that better encapsulates what the people who coined the term were feeling? More-so with postmodernism, because in reality its a different beast, not a derivative or a descendant of the modern one.

About time we renamed these two concepts.

Here’s my attempt at distilling these complex concepts down to a few words.

Modernism is  ‘Hope of absolute meaning/ certainty of favourable changes’

Postmodernism is ‘acknowledgement of uncertainty in changes/ meaning making’

These terms are fairly restrictive, I agree. But it captures the unifying sensibility behind the movements/ changes that defined ‘modern’ or ‘postmodern’ artifacts/ events.

Modernism

Modernism essentially is blinkered optimism.

Modernism is about humanity’s optimism with technological changes (instant photograph, instant communication, plumbing), social changes (democracy, communism, cults). A thousand optimistic -isms proliferated in 20th century. What a time to live in for an intellectual! To think and to work towards utopias!). Communism, Capitalism, Maoism, Minimalism or even Taliban’s version of Islam – proponents of all these movements did actually believe in their -isms. They were working towards a positive change as they saw the world. These ideas affected art too and gave rise to many -isms that too have a strand of idealism that defines the art work. (Constructivism, Dadaism, Stalinist Totalitarianism) Even if a modern message was dark, it was full of certainty of one’s world view. That certainty was born out of a sense of ‘I now know what is right for the world. Only if we change these things.. the world will be alright.’ That is essentially a modernist’s mindset. Modernists essentially are optimist, because there is a certainty in there mind about their view of the world – science apparently has all the answers so do the politicians and the religious heads. There are authorities who are absolute.
The optimism of a modernist however, isn’t all roses. It’s in the nature of an idealist to attempt to change the world. And a single person can’t do that. You need to convince many people about your ideas of utopia to make it a reality. But when you can’t do that with honest and reasonable dialogue as two equal individuals (and you never can), you end up becoming a tyrant – forcing your perspective on others with threats, social boycott, death or even worse – rewriting history. In Czechoslovakia, a certain Mr. Clementis was simply erased from history. In India, the current government is busy forcing children to think that ancient India had flying planes and that a cow can solve all our problems. and so on. There are endless examples from antiquity to now of dangerously foolish people with simplistic ideas of change for a better world – unfortunately, the price of which must be extracted from a scapegoat – Mexicans in US, Guatemalans in Mexico, dalits in India, minorities everywhere. This is the price of ‘modernism’.

gottwald_clementis

Post-truth: History minus Mr. Clementis

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the identification of this futility: The Sisyphean tragedy that we can’t escape. The tragedy itself is ‘modern’. (and as with Sisyphus, eternal) The recognition of which is ‘postmodern’.

The fall of Berlin wall, dissolution of Soviet union, Quantum physics, chaos theory, internet, crypto currency, refugee crisis, mixed race marriages, LGBTQ pride parades, vocal atheists, weak looking tech billionaires who didn’t wear suits, climate change threatening our survival….

The edifice of certainty has come crumbling down. Reasonable among us, can’t go on believing in simplistic ideals of utopias.

A postmodern worldview, understands that there is no easy solution to global or even personal problems. That there are no ‘final solutions’. But because one doesn’t know a solution, doesn’t mean one shouldn’t critically examine modernist solution of others. Because, the modernists often have final solutions that are worse than the problems they solve. Modernists (Hindutvawadi, Nationalists, separatists, Nazis, Marxists, Capitalists, Republicans, Democrats.. all identity groups) find this finger pointing inconvenient and get agitated. They are incapable of reasoning. And hence, most modernist movements end up as tragedies for the scapegoats and the intellectuals.

That is the way humanity functions, with a healthy dose of denials. The denial is essential to go on living with limited perspective; to go on living in service of the system at detriment to self. Humanity as a social group, thrived due to this very denial. We can’t let that go now, simply because we have instant answers at our fingertips due to internet. Hence fake-news. The denials is essential for maintenance of sanity of millions.

Postmodernism – When the pace of change became unbearable and humanity needed a carpet to dust away its confusions and dissonance under, it coined a term – postmodernism.

This is why post-modern work of art typically is confusing. Because, it is not meant to convey a singular vision. But rather, it is trying to show us some complexity, some chaos that the creator feels, we are blind to. Postmodern art is confusing because it is not about giving answers, but about raising questions.

Globalised world and internet = Frenzy caused by reality puncturing our denial

For those with the courage to look at reality objectively, Internet is a means to understand the complex interplay of events, motives, behaviors, resources etc. For the unreasonable among us, internet is an echo chamber where one goes to validate one’s own narrow worldviews.

Internet has short-circuited the natural course of ideas that humanity was geared to deal with. No modern ideals now have enough time and space to grow without the harsh jab of postmodern reality, puncturing its ideals. So either a person will go insane with the realisation of absurdity of life. Or drown himself in meaningless and eternally boring life that is validated by the system’s authority figures. Or react sharply with abuse, threats, anger to discomfort creators. Or as it rarely happens, listen and engage his flailing neurons in his brains to comprehend an alternate world view and in the process expand his narrow little world. The best among us embrace the absurdity and make themselves useful to others – hey if your existence is meaningless, might as well help fellow insignificant humans on their little journeys towards eventual deaths. Might as well, explore little corners of the vast world and grow as person. Might as well, do some good unto others. Might as well, not loose our shit over imaginary gods and abstract ideals.

The absurd life

There is no omnipotent god. Our existence on earth is a delicate affair. There is no judge with moral superiority.  Science only knows that we don’t know enough. There is no certainty of success/ happiness. There is no one true path of life. Relatives can’t be trusted with the child. There is no trust. There is no fixed price even. A shaving razor might be for Rs. 100 on amazon for me, Rs 74 for someone else… There is no certainty about anything.

Life essentially is absolutely absurd.
Earlier, only philosophers contemplated the absurdity of our existence. Now the world forces us to experience that absurdity in every instance. That is the postmodern experience. Post modernism, is our engagement with that big uncertainty.