https://medium.com/@jnnielsen/a-thought-experiment-relevant-to-the-fermi-paradox-113219d8d735
i thought, think, that the "Fermi Paradox" is a nice backdrop to this musing; hence this visual.. :)
a worldview is ultimately only *My* view of the world, and the word ‘world’ itself is not one, exclusively defined, or used, semantically - sometimes it is our earth, or solar system, or milky way, or the known universe, or even the speculated multiverses..
this world – whether it is this earth or my country, or anything else – is also many things at once, and many realities. it is different for each one of us living specie; not just human beings but for all.
for instance, me - born in chennai, in 1961, at a point in the socio-eco-cultural setting of my country, state and locality, to a teacher and home maker couple as parents, brought up across rural areas of tamilnadu during childhood and schooling days studying in my mother-tongue tamizh as the medium of instruction, falling headlong in love with reading and languages and the written word in prose and poetry right then, coming to chennai for under-graduation, going out to sea for five years as a merchant marine cadet and officer at age eighteen in an unprecedented career choice in my orthodox family, going all over the world several times circumnavigating the earth even while still in late teens and early twenties, getting exposed to the world geographies, races, cultures and trades, doing a post-graduate shipping management program and working ashore in a shipping co., in mumbai of early 80s, transitioning to FMCG, coming back to chennai to reunite with family, rapidly growing there to national leadership roles in national and multi-national employ while still in early thirties, getting married to an extraordinary semi-urban background girl, being blessed with two fine boys as sons, doing a masters in sociology, and an accelerated senior management program with cornell university, transition back to mumbai again, get trained in total quality management in japan and in european quality models, become a certified assessor of business excellence of corporations, work with CII as an assessor, be a nominated ceo for total quality systems, get to travel across the world again but this time with very different outlook and maturities, providentially get to teach quality management as a PG course to iit-bombay school of management students as a co-faculty, leaving the indian MNC transitioning back to chennai to work in a startup, fail there, discover a block in the heart blood vessel at age 40 to be managed medically and lifestyle changes, consult and train for hindustan unilever, get a bypass surgery at an age of 45, end up running that same cardiac centre tertiary care hospital as a non-medical administrator/COO for two years post-convalescence, get an entry into the world of higher education in management into a b.school of destined greatness thanks to the earlier innocuous opportunity to teach in iit-bombay and due to the past-mentors’ compassion - all serendipitously, discovering the teacher and educationist in me in the next fourteen years, falling in love with entrepreneurship and negotiations as areas of deep meaning and passion, enrolling for a PhD in the area of micro, mini and small entrepreneurship in india, discovering the incredible joy of being with bright young men and women in the learning environment…
you can see from all this, and will agree, that this, my world, was/is mine alone, and as importantly, not yours – and vice versa..!
thus in my reasoning, it is virtually meaningless to make any *one* macro ‘assessment’ / description statements about the world, in an *existential* sense.
and thus to realise that each of us have what i have conceptualised and termed, the “relevant Universe (RU)” for each of us - with its own gods of one's own connotations even - which applies and will be sensible to all entities, not just individual human being. thus each individual, family, community, institution and country, will have their own respective RU, which also is not static but dynamic, living, evolving and changing - but *always distinct if not unique*.
thus the one (perhaps only) meaningful thing to do for each of us is to realise and comprehend one's own RU, and then do a soul search - “atma vichar” - to see what appears to be *my* duties, based on my roles, commitments and my dharma (beliefs, convictions, sense of right and wrong, values and thus duties) - and look at the environment, in one’s RU - for that as the only one pertinent to me/you from time to time, develop an engagement and actions plan for that RU, and go ahead and perform.
perform, keeping the commitment of doing right in the actions, doing the right things by the people and one's relevant universe or even others’ relevant universes who/which will be affected by my thoughts and ultimately actions, accept the fruits of those actions that you beget with happiness and gratitude at all times as a sure derivation of embracing “contentment” as the one valuable outlook in valuations, and thus assuredly live happily with the near and dear and one's own good self…
this seem to me to be what Life is.
would you agree?
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