Ideas in a Trivia #5: Into the Wild

If you haven’t seen the movie “Into the wild”, please do so at the earliest opportunity. It’s based on a very liberating real life story of Christopher McCandless, a young 24 year old college grad who detests the ways of the society, throws away everything and goes into the wilderness in Alaska. The movie tracks his journey that spanned over 2years before he finally reaches Alaska.

This movie triggered a thought that our academic and growing up years which are really the formative years of a human being should be used to do some interesting, non routine things to expose people to rich experiences that will help us develop a very holistic view of the world around us.

Some things that all of us should probably do before turning 30,

1. Work at least 2 years in the armed forces
2. Stay 6 months absolutely alone cutting off all contacts (preferably in wilderness)
3. Stay 6months with relatives, preferably in a big joint family
4. Learn at least one sport very well
5. Learn at least one art very well (music, painting, magic etc)
6. Work 3 months for a company full time for ‘zero’ pay
7. Live with people who have very contrasting background, nature and outlook
8. Live in a village
9. Learn to cook your own food, wash dishes and clothes
10. Practice Meditation (without attaching any religious context to it)
11. Do part time jobs and earn you own school fee for at least 1yr of school or college
12. Make at least one good friendship (platonic) in the opposite sex
13. Be absolutely silent for one full week every year
14. Make friendship with one elderly person
15. Learn about the government and laws of the land

Ideas #19: Learn Chinese, Talk German

This is an idea for all the HRD and Education ministers of the world. As per Wikipedia, following are the major 10 spoken languages, based on the number of native speakers:

Language                 Encarta estimate
Mandarin                 1,210,000,000
Hindi/Urdu                366,000,000
English                        341,000,000
Spanish                       322,200,000
Arabic                         422,039,637
Bengali                        207,000,000
Portuguese                176,000,000
Russian                       167,000,000
Japanese                     125,000,000
German                       100,130,000

What if all children around the world are taught these languages at school and over let’s say the next 25 years the entire world population is able to converse in all these languages.

You may ask why learn all these languages and not just pick one and make everyone learn that one language well. It’s simply because diversity and not homogenization of society is the solution to all problems that we currently face.

At the same though, it will be unimaginably useful for us to learn to communicate with people in their native languages. This reason is this. There are 4 major factors that divide human beings; colour of the skin, spoken language, day to day culture and economic status. Apart from colour of skin which we cannot change (at least through natural means) all the other 3 aspects are pretty flexible and have been developed by human beings over aeons of time to suit individual conveniences.

In my opinion if all of us are able to systematically learn all of these languages it will trigger unprecedented inter mingling of the society, help us understand other cultures better which in turn will improve and accelerate trade and the overall economic balance (Of course improving economic balance has other dependencies like availability of resources, human greed etc.) This is an idea that can be vaguely likened to a butterfly effect.

I can’t wait to see a day when I can say “Guten Morgen” to a Pakistani gentleman and hear him respond with a “Ni Hao”!!

Idea #14: The Currency of Currency!

This idea came up in a discussion with my friends a few years ago. I think the idea just evolved during our discussion so no one person can be credited to it.

Money is often considered as the root of most evils and that it corrupts people beyond redemption. If we think about it though, it’s not money but the hoarding of it and the imbalance that the hoarding creates in society which is the main problem.
The idea goes like this. What if the wealth of an individual had an expiry date? One may have any amount of wealth but will seize to be theirs after a certain time. So what ever they want to do with the wealth has to be done within the set period.

After the expiry date whatever wealth remains goes to a common world pool and will be circulated to others after that. This happens to every single individual globally. So one can hoard money beyond a certain period and since hoarding money doesn’t make sense people will be perpetually spending and money is always in circulation and never away in bank lockers and deposits.

On the surface this sounds like a socialist idea but hang on there is an interesting twist here.

Irrespective of how much money you own you are allowed to spend only a certain amount before which the total amount expires. You may ask why? It’s simple actually. Since individual wealth has an expiry date everyone will be greedy to buy and hoard ‘things’ instead of money and soon the world will run out of resources and be unable to feed this kind of consumption. Hence the limit on spending.

What about profits, motivation to succeed, to become rich to excel etc etc. What’s the point if I cannot even keep my money?
Well there is a solution to this too. But before that please pause to think of the possibilities that the above process can create. Money is constantly in circulation, we will never have disproportional inflation or deflation. Markets won’t crash because of the circulation of money etc etc.
Now coming back to the bit about motivation to succeed and how do we differentiate the performer v/s the non performer. Simply by allocating lesser amounts and much more time to spend that money and adding a condition that subsequent allocation will not happen till that prolonged expiry date runs out. High performers are allocated more money and faster expiry dates and quicker fresh allocation. So there you go, there is enough monetary reason for you to be successful and excel at what you do.

So the key rules of this system are,

1. Money has an expiry date for the individual after which it moves on
2. You can spend only a limited amount within each expiry period
3. Non performers are allocated lesser money and more time to spend it
4. High performers are allocated more money, faster expiry dates and quicker new allocation

So, how current is your currency?

Idea #13: Individual Changes

This one is an idea but not in the normal sense of the term. It’s like that prayer that is blogged in an earlier post, something that is in practice elsewhere that I wanted to share on this blog.

The idea is simple but the most profound one that I have ever heard and it’s not a coincidence that it comes from a great saint. Here’s how it goes,

“Individual changes can only create lasting changes in the Society”

Simple, isn’t it? Now put this to practice on yourself and let me know how it’s works for you. It’s not that simple after all!

Idea #2: SoPer!!

Our life is a sequence of activities. Little actions linked in a sequence to form patterns, personalities, societies and our general way of life. Everything is a sequence of events. Any change in one event inevitably leads to changes in the eventuality of the event before the change happened.

What we call as personal changes is actually change in activities. Some changes are conscious, some innate and some coerced by circumstances. If the same activity changes in a large multitude of people at the same time then what we call as changes in the society occur.

SoPer is a social media service that tracks, measures, designs and reports social changes occurring as a result of small personal changes in activity.

It is completely user driven where a user creates of list of activities that comprises his/her daily life. Activities should be as granular and as specific as possible. Once the activities are created the user can trigger changes to an individual or a set of activities and share with other users within a closed or an open group. Others in the group can emulate these changes or trigger their own changes.

Closed groups can create rules of compliance in which a change in activity agreed by a group will be followed by all members of the group. There should be an option for members to opt out.

The changes can be permanent or for a limited period as agreed by the group. Change in activity does not project changes in the outcome but the outcome of the change in activity is a mere observation of the impact of changes. In other words there are no set goals but goals are observed, documented and shared with other users or other groups. These can be made public or can be kept private.

SoPer is intended to provide a social web platform to affect societal changes through small personal activity changes that happens within groups of people.