What is your licorice?

 A friend of mine is a big fan of Grateful Dead. I guess he is one of the Deadheads. I do not know much about music and even less about Grateful Dead. Therefore, I could not relate to his enthusiasm or his almost fanatical worship of this group.

I saw the above picture with that profound line in this lovely article about Grateful Dead. Everything fell into place.

That line and the philosophy that Grateful Dead embodied is a lesson for everyone and every organization. The lesson is simple. Know your core, know your licorice. No one can mess with you.

However, it seems from the mess we create for ourselves, we cannot follow this principle. The temptations are many. Therefore, in our attempt to be all things to all people, we wind up being nothing.

Agencies never fail to surprise me. They never stop from preaching to their clients that they should stand for something, a mission, an ideal. Yet when you question these very agencies what they stand for or what their core is, you will receive one of the vaguest answers that will make a politician proud. And like any politician, most agencies stand for only one thing. 

Why so serious?

People are taking themselves a bit too seriously, at least some of them. These ‘taking-themselves-seriously’ types are the root cause of most problems we see around us. And they are present everywhere.  The following examples might give you an idea as to what I am hinting at.

The West

We need to ‘civilize these natives’. Democracy at any cost and when it suits our purpose is the only answer. If oil is available in plenty, why bother about democracy?

Religion

My god is the only god. No, no…my god is the real god. And all you heathen, pagan and infidels are doomed to burn in hell. Just sign up for our god, you can get the best holiday package in heaven.

Indian politicians

We know what is good for the people even though we do not practice it ourselves. Only socialism and secularism can save this country from certain doom. Hey, our offshore accounts are none of your business. 

Indian media, intellectuals and assorted scoundrels…er…activists

If you don’t agree with us, you are nothing but a rabble-rousing right-wing pig. Only we know what is good for society. Accusing us of twisting truth? Hey, we are only exercising our right of free speech.

Marketers and their brands

Our mission is to propel the consumer into stratospheric heights in their quest of realizing their potential when they use our brand. BTW, can your CD’s come up with a ‘cutting edge’ birthday card for our CEO’s pet Chihuahua?

Agencies

Our proprietary ‘WTF Tool’ helps us distil the essence of the brand through a combination of lateral inversion and posterior penetration while scattering the ashes of whatever is left of the brand through an integrated media agnostic prism.

Phew!

Why do people insist on thrusting their belief systems onto others? Don’t they realize the futility of it all? Whenever I hear this kind of stuff, I just want to say one thing. Loosen up, guys. But then I know that this will only provoke ‘these types’ into a manic state making matters worse. 

Death is the ultimate leveler. It does not discriminate. It is said that moments before death, reality dawns upon people. This wonderful piece on the regrets of the dying is an eye-opener. In the end, all that matters is experiencing the joys of life. 

Lastly, the increasingly hostile atmosphere we see around the world is caused by bigotry. And bigotry can be attributed directly to these ‘taking-themselves-seriously’ types. 

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Intelligence

I do not share the above view about life but I surely feel that way whenever I enter an autorickshaw(tuk-tuk for the uninitiated) with a suspect fare meter or worse, no meter.

This post is not about that. It is about everyday people, like the autorickshaw driver above, and the intelligence (or wisdom) they possess that is seldom recognised and appreciated. They have an uncanny knack of striking a chord with their observations about life around us.

Speaking of autorickshaw drivers, I ran into one such colourful personality in my hometown Bangalore sometime back. He was cursing the road leading to my parents place from the main road. He asked me why none us did not protest. I remember giving him some vague answer as to why it was not possible in the area my folks lived. He dismissed them with a shrug and said, “The problem is you are all educated.” He nailed it.

He went to mention that in the area he lived, there had been no water supply for a long time. When the time came for elections, he and his friends mobilized the entire area to boycott the local councilor’s visit to the area. The councilor had no choice but to fix the problem of water supply before being allowed inside the area. As a response to this gesture, they voted him out.

(BTW, he also took extra ten rupees from me as ‘hardship’ fee)

I am not alone in my encounter with such intelligence(or smarts) from the streets. I have copied below an incident narrated by the great Isaac Asimov that is at once funny and profound.

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.

(It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.

Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

"The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them."

Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you."

"Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart." 

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.