"Let's talk about death" is certainly not a joyous way to begin or end your day, but bear with me. This won't end morbidly.

There are three attitudes that I've generally observed when someone talks about death:

• Evasion: You ask your mother about your sick grandma. "Ma, what happened to grandma? How is she doing?" To protect you, your mom lies, "She's just under the weather. Everything is fine, child!" I observed this a lot growing up. Even when my own father was going through medical troubles, he wouldn't reveal it. He would evade the question masterfully. "Appa, where are your blood test results?" [Pause] "Oh the doctor's office never sent me a copy; they just shared the results on a phone."

• Fear: This is probably more common once you grow up. We fear death as if it's a vile, unwelcome guest that's robbing us of everything we love and care of. Who hasn't heard stories of people sharing their greatest regrets right before they die? In fact, an entire book was written on this: The 5 Regrets of The Dying. The way death is portrayed in movies and media -- with violence, grief, and bloodshed -- it's natural that we fear it.

• Apathy: And then there are the people whose life mantra is YOLO. They don't think about nor talk about death. Not because they're evading it. Rather, they think, "We're all gonna die anyway. Why bother worrying about it? Let's make the most of every day."

I found a fourth attitude in a book I began reading a few days ago: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

This is how the author, Sogyal Rinpoche, describes the fourth attitude,

"Death is neither depressing nor exciting; it is simply a fact of life. According to the wisdom of Buddha, we can use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us into looking at our lives. Nor are we condemned to go out empty-handed at death to meet the unknown. We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare -- wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind -- for death and eternity. In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected."

Instead of evading, fearing, or being indifferent to death, Rinpoche urges the reader to accept death while we're alive and use the knowledge of acceptance to prepare for it, by living a life that is fueled with meaning.

In my case, I've thought about the death of my loved ones significantly more than I've thought about my own death. I feel paralyzed with fear when I think about the death of the people I love; tears stream down my face before I finish a thought. But, reading this book is giving me a chance to view death differently.

I'll share more learnings on here as I keep reading it.

If you'd like to join me on this intellectual journey, subscribe to my newsletter, Making Of A Book, where I share short essays on interesting topics like this each week and share the behind-the-scenes journey of publishing my second book, Unshackled.

Photo Courtesy: Elliana Esquivel

"Man is troubled not by events, but the meaning he gives them." -- Epictetus.

It is 304 B.C.

A 30-year-old, haggard, dark-skinned merchant is on a voyage from Phoenicia to Peiraeus when his ship is destroyed. Luckily, he survives the shipwreck and lands in Athens, Greece, which at the time was the epicenter of philosophical study.

A bookstore catches his attention as he enters the Polis. He walks in and happens to pick up Memorabilia by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. As he reads about the father of philosophy, a man whose intellect rose above his circumstances, he asks the bookseller excitedly, "Sir, where can I find men like Socrates in this town?" Just then, Crates -- a famous cynic living at the time in Greece -- walks by the bookstore. The bookseller points to Crates, saying, "There's your man! He's the one. Go talk to him."

Soon, he becomes a pupil of Crates, eager to absorb what his teacher has to say.

Cynicism was one of the schools of philosophy back then. The word cynic has nothing to do with the meaning we give it today. Cynicism is a way of living life in virtue and in agreement with nature. It's about rejecting all conventional norms and desires for wealth, power, and fame. It's about living a simple, ascetic life, sometimes in a derisive way in public.

To teach Cynicism, Crates gives the pupil a pot of lentil soup and says, "Here. Now, carry this around wherever you go. That's your lesson number one."

Overcome with bashfulness, the pupil tries to hide the soup under his cloak. But Crates, irked by his lack of respect, smashes the pot, leaving a trail of soup -- dribbling like diarrhea -- down his legs. "You must not feel ashamed of this. You must not care what anybody thinks."

Eventually, though, the pupil leaves Crates to set up his own school of philosophy.

That is what we call today stoicism.

Who invented Stoicism?

The pupil from the story above is Zeno of Citium. His dive into philosophy is supposed to have come from consulting the oracle, a name given to the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo. In his biography, Diogenes, another philosopher, writes that "Zeno's interest in philosophy began when he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors." (Interestingly, Socrates' quest for answers is also said to have come from consulting the oracle). Zeno began learning the Cynic philosophy from Crates, but soon discovered that he was too conventional for it. Besides, he realized, there is a way to adopt the same Socratic value system -- of placing knowledge above all desires -- and still live a conventional life where you take part in the policies of your city and be a member of your society. Zeno began teaching his new school of thought at the Stoa Poikile (meaning painted porch) in the Agora of Athens. At first, his disciples were called Zenonians, but soon, they came to be known as Stoics, a name previously given to poets who congregated at the Stoa Poikile.

Athens In 300 B.C.

The world looked very different when Zeno set up a school in 300 B.C. versus when Aristotle did, a hundred years ago. Between 400 and 300 B.C., the greek city-state polis went through many wars and was thoroughly destroyed by the Macedonian Empire. It was a time of utter chaos and confusion. People were feeling far more powerless than their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. So they turned to philosophy as a salve for their soul, slowly separating what they can't control (everything on the outside) from what they can (everything on the inside). More specifically, Stoicism as a philosophy gave them solace in knowing that they were all part of something much greater, thus making the absorption of Polis into the Macedonian Empire more palatable. Alongside Zeno, there were several other schools of philosophy that occupied Greece in 300 B.C.: including the schools set up by Aristotle, Diogenes, Plato, Epicurus. These schools were not diametrically opposite in what they taught. In fact, all of them promised to teach you how to lead a better life and become a better version of yourself.

As Jonathan Rée, philosopher and historian, says, "Choosing between these schools -- which were all proximate to each other -- was more like choosing between Cafe Narrow and Starbucks than choosing between rationalism and empiricism."

The Three Pillars of Stoicism

The philosophy of stoicism really rests on three pillars (or three topois): Logic. Physics. Ethics. As with the word cynic, the meaning of these three words was different back then from what they are perceived to be today. Logic refers to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, and is more expansive than the modern meaning it's given today. Physics refers to the structure of the physical world, a combination of what we today call metaphysics and natural sciences. Ethics refers to the role we humans play in the physical world around us. Said another way, ethics is the central pillar that guides you on how to live your life in virtue with nature. But to build strong ethics, you need a good understanding of the workings of the world (physics) and the capacity to reason correctly (logic).

Keep Reading...

I plan to continue appending my learnings here over the coming weeks and build a comprehensive guide on Stoicism, so if you'd like to join me on this intellectual journey, sign up for my weekly newsletter to get updated on future articles. :)

Photo Courtesy: Sako Asko

I first came across A Brave New World in another book, called Amusing Ourselves To Death (quite a title indeed). In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Post argues that although two great dystopian novels were published in the 19th century predicting the future of humanity, only one of them got it right.

And it wasn't the novel that most people thought would get it right.

It wasn't 1984 by George Orwell, no. It was indeed A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

A Strange New World

Picture 2540 C.E., or as it's written in A Brave New World, 632 A.F. where A.F. refers to After Ford. The world of 632 A.F. is not a brave one; rather a strange one. With the "headquarters" set in London, the novel begins with Mustapha Mond, one of the "Ten World Controllers" (or the current equivalent of an oligarch dictator), taking a bunch of school children on a tour around the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center where children are created outside the womb and cloned relentlessly in order to increase the population and efficiency.

Children are sorted into one of the five classes from the moment they're an embryo: Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Those in the upper classes enjoy the greater privilege.

Further, since children are created outside the womb, they are thoroughly conditioned. To do what, you might ask? All sorts of things. To hate books and flowers, to love Soma (a drug that makes people happy), to never think about history, to revere technoloy, to be with as many partners as they'd like, and to value society over any form of individuality. In such a world, you're never alone. You're surrounded by people. You take soma everyday. You sleep with anyone you want. And solitude is a laughable idea.

Similarities, and Differences

Huxley wrote this novel in 1932, between WWI and WWII. A time when technology was proclaimed to be the solution to war and disease; and the idea of efficiency and mass production was championed thanks to Henry Ford.

While reading this book, I couldn't help but notice many similarities (and differences) between world painted by Huxley and the world we live in today. Here are my observations:

Similarities

Their hypnopaedic messages = our advertisements: I opened YouTube today to watch the ad "Yes to Prop 27" for the 10th time this week (and this week just started). In A Brave New World, the "conditioning" happens when the children grow up in a high-tech decantation center. Messages get whispered in their ear on loop while they sleep. The messages might say, "Alphas work much harder than we do. They're so much cleverer. I'm so glad I'm a Beta so I don't need to work so hard." Or they could say, "A gramme (of Soma) in time saves nine." The world we live in now does that to us while we're wide awake. We're repeatedly and obsessively exposed to messages: ranging from why we need to vote for Prop 27 to how Mint mobile is the best for you to why pillow-cube is better than a regular pillow. And who can forget the damn GEICO gecko? Their soma = our one-click access to entertainment: In Huxley's world, all someone needed to do to forget their worries and become happy was pop in a gramme of soma. In our world, while drugs are still illegal in many parts of the world (although the situation is changing), we've found other ways to keep ourselves entertained. Or said differently, we've found other ways to escape our worries. As I write this, I'll confess that I'm no more immune to this than you my friend. I've had days when I chose to binge-watch The Office instead of sitting with my feelings. This is scary, mainly because there's no going back from this degree of convenience. Their hate for solitude = our fear of solitude: There's a specific moment in Huxley's book when Bernard Marx, a troubled young man, is out on a date with Lenina Wallace, the quintessential byproduct of thorough conditioning. They're hovering over a sea in their helicopter when Bernard stops the engine to look at the sea. “I want to look at the sea in peace,” he said. “One can’t even look with that beastly noise going on.” “But it’s lovely. And I don’t want to look.” “But I do,” he insisted. “It makes me feel as though…” he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, “as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn’t it make you feel like that, Lenina?” But Lenina was crying. “It’s horrible, it’s horrible,” she kept repeating. “And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone."

This scene represents the output of conditioning a population to hate being by themselves; to rob them of the pleasures of solitude.

I don't think our world is as bad; but I fear we're not much better either.

Differences

It would be remiss of me to not mention the differences, which I found to be more than the similarities honestly. We still love books and history: One of the more upsetting facts of the world painted by Huxley is the people's hatred of books and history. Once again, this is thanks to hypnopaedic messages whispered in their ears 1043 times for 8 months. I don't believe this is the case in our world. More books are published today per year -- 1.7 million -- than ever in history. However, one could argue that that's not just because we love reading books, as much as we're able to publish more easily today than ever before. Still, if anything, we're on the dichotomy of Huxley's world. We're gluttons of information today; consuming more than we need to or can handle. Still, we don't hate books. And we certainly don't hate history. Family is still a core value: In Huxley's world, there's no concept of a mother or father. In fact, those words bring out a reaction of disgust and horror when uttered sparsely throughout the book. But I'm elated that that's not the case today. I love my mom and dad, and the idea of a family is still championed everywhere across the world. One interesting point though is our openness to polygamy today than a century ago. Less than 0.1% of the population in America practice open polygamy. So we're far from that becoming the norm. Our connection to religion and a higher purpose: There's no idea of a God in Huxley's world; only Ford. One of the few people who has read the Bible in that world is Mustapha Mond, who locks it away from the general public. Our world is still a religious one, with over 80% identifying with one religion or the other. Thanks to the rise of self-development, psychology, and also our rise out of poverty, more % of the world today think about self-actualization and higher purposes than a century ago. Finally, our movements to end segregation: Segregation is the norm in Huxley's world. I'd say our ancestors have worked very hard to drive us in the opposite direction. Thanks to the likes of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Ambedkar, we live in a more humanistic society now with laws that protect our basic human rights.

Closing Thoughts

A little-known fact: Huxley sent a letter to Orwell after Orwell published his book 1984.

In the letter, he begins by first praising him for his philosophy, only to undermine that by saying the world painted by Huxley is much more probable than the one painted by Orwell.

The letter ends with,

"Within the next generation, I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds."

Well, Huxley didn't get a lot right. And I suspect he wasn't planning to.

He wanted to paint an absurd world 90 years ago.

But it's scary to notice that the absurd world is starting to become a real one today.

Introduction

Two great novels were published in 1932 and 1949.

Both prophesied a dystopian future where we're oppressed, depraved, and shackled. Except, the paths they charted were different.

One prophesied that we would be oppressed by a hateful external tyrant, called Big Brother. The other prophesied that our autonomy would be deprived not by something we hate, but by the technology we will come to love.

One feared a world where our oppressor would ban books. The other feared a world where there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

One feared a world that would deprive us of information. The other feared a world where we will be drowning in a sea of information rendering us numb and indifferent.

One of these novels, in fact, did manifest itself in our current world.

But it wasn't the novel that most people feared would come true.

1984 vs A Brave New World

1984 was written by George Orwell and published in 1949. A Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932.

Orwell imagined a world where war was perpetual, people were severely oppressed by the government and everyone was under constant surveillance.

Barring the senseless war between Russia and Ukraine right now, it's safe to say that we're living in a largely peaceful world where at least those of us in the developed nations have autonomy and freedom to do what we want. No oppression. No surveillance. No Big Brother.

However, something far worse has happened. The world painted by Huxley in his novel -- a world where consumerism flourishes, entertainment numbs people of feelings, and technology controls our lives -- has come true.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

I just finished reading a book titled Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman. In it, Postman begins the book by talking about the irony between the aforementioned two novels, and how the one whose story most people didn't pay attention to has in fact come true.

He says,

For all his perspicacity, George Orwell would have been stymied by this (the present) situation; there is nothing “Orwellian” about it. The President does not have the press under his thumb. The New York Times and The Washington Post are not Pravda (a Russian communist newspaper); the Associated Press is not Tass. And there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference. This is why Aldous Huxley would not in the least be surprised by the story. Indeed, he prophesied its coming. He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it, single file and manacled. Huxley grasped as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcoticized by technological diversions. Although Huxley did not specify that television would be our main line to the drug, he would have no difficulty accepting Robert MacNeil’s observation that “Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” Big Brother turns out to be Howdy Doody. (Location 1890)

The book, as a consequence of being published in 1985, primarily focuses on the impact of television on our minds (and our culture). Postman fears that we've willingly walked into a future where television has become the portal through which we learn about the world. He laments the decline of the written word and calls for us to question the medium through which we consume our information. Postman is not a Luddite who hates technology, however. No. In fact, he says that TV does have its place in our culture: to produce junk shows. The problem arises when we begin consuming important and serious information through our television. He says,

The best things on television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it. Besides, we do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television, is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high and when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.

He goes on to talk about the importance of the medium through which we consume our information, why telegraphy began the destruction of typography, how we're drowning in a sea of entertainment and irrelevance and ends with sharing two lackluster solutions to these problems. Lackluster not because of lack of his effort; but because of the gravity (and complexity) of the problem.

My Takeaways

 Photo credits: Olivier Bonhomme

Reading Amusing Ourselves To Death in 2022 feels like reading the script for a movie that you've already watched, and acted in.

It feels banal for me to tell you that we're drowning in a sea of irrelevant information and distractions. Or that entertainment is cutting into our lives at a level that's scary.

I knew this already. You knew this already.

Yet, reading Amusing Ourselves To Death was worthwhile for me, because it gave me a chance to sit down and think about the following questions:

• What does my current information diet look like?

• How has my relationship with my phone and social media changed over the years? Is it for the better or worse?

• What role does a "medium" play in the information it's conveying?

• Where am I consuming my content from? Is it time to revisit and "revamp" this pipeline?

• Finally, what important questions are being shoved aside by all the distractions?

The late Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard and the founder of "disruptive innovation", published an article in 2010 titled How Will You Measure Your Life. There's a particular passage in the article that stuck out for me:

"For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra yearʼs worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasnʼt studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life. Itʼs the single most useful thing Iʼve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, theyʼll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they donʼt figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life."

The opposing forces that distract you from what's most important will only keep growing with time.

Neil Postman predicted in 1985 (and Aldous Huxley in 1932) that we're heading towards a future where we will love the thing that controls us and keeps us captive. Like victims of Stockholm syndrome, this has indeed come true.

But I believe, that just by the act of recognizing the power that technology, entertainment, advertisements, and social media have on our attention, we can diminish it. By sitting down to think about our information diet, we've put up our shields. And by pondering upon the role that mediums of information play in our lives, we're taking back our control.