Origin of Creative Prophecies

OK. I'll admit it - I check Daily Mail once a day. I blame my wife for hooking me to the site - it's mostly useless drivel but a good way to pass time in the train or when I am bored - although I am getting increasingly tired of repetitive news.

A few days back among a bunch of Kim Kardashian news articles, there was an interesting article about Srinivasa Ramanujan - the mathematical genius. Apparently Ramanujan, in his deathbed, wrote a bunch of formulas and sent them to his mentor G. H. Hardy saying that they were important and were revealed to him by Goddess Namagiri, who he worshiped and believed to be his source of genius. A century and change later, it has apparently been found that those formulas that were cryptic at that time, could now hold the key to understanding portions of how black holes function. Interestingly, black holes were not even discovered during Ramanujan's time (1920s)!

 
In many of the news sites, the comments are sometimes more interesting than the article. Most of it is irrelevant trolling, but it also gives some window into the general public's psyche.

Not surprisingly, there were many comments initially dismissing Ramanujan's notion that the formulas were revealed to him by the Goddess. Alternate explanations were Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, etc. - anything other than spiritual intervention.

Now, if you haven't read the famous biography of Ramaujan - "The man who knew Infinity", I strongly urge you to do so - it's a fascinating read.

 

In the biography, the author reaffirms Ramanujan's spiritual beliefs and some insight into how his 'genius' originated. The comments reminded me of a notion by Elizabeth Gilbert that I had mentioned in my earlier post "Will we ever be alone with our thoughts again". In her talk, she mentions the notion of ideas passing through as waves and that inspiration is essentially who happens to be at the right time and right place to catch the wave.

Maybe in Ramanujan's case, he happened to catch the 'wave' that contained the mock theta functions. Maybe what differentiates genius and mediocrity is the level of luck - geniuses are more lucky and tend to catch more waves, while others are not so much! Then the question becomes "who creates the wave in the first place?" and that's a nice little space for the spiritualists to play in!

Of course, the alternate explanation is also rooted in chance or probability - may be Ramanujan's brain happened to wire itself in such a way as to figure out the formulas. Spiritualists can argue that the wiring was done by the Goddess and atheists can argue that it was mere probability and that he happened to luck out.

So, we can go either way - believe that it is all probability - a quantum fluctuation if you will - and that nothing has anything to do with God, or we can believe that there is a 'hidden hand' that creates waves or rewires brains to surface 'genius' every once in a while. Whichever may be the truth, I think the latter assumption is worth pursuing because a) if it is pure probability, it doesn't make a difference what you believe in and b) if there is a hidden hand, maybe the belief will make you more tuned to catching the waves than others who may not realize it passing through!

Honorable Plagiarism

"Don't plagiarize" - this message is drilled into every student in school and college. With abundance of information and increasingly easier and smarter ways of finding that information and match it to your needs, it is becoming more and more difficult to adhere to this even as teachers are doing their best to use smarter software to detect plagiarism.

However, everyone 'copies' - be it a Bollywood music lifted (or as the artists say - 'inspired') from earlier works or even major innovations like the one witnessed via the Apple vs. Samsung battle. So, with copying of intellectual information happening all around us, the line is getting blurrier on what is considered plagiarism and what would be an acceptable 'inspiration'.

Working in the Content Management space, this particular issue crosses work and life for me, as part of an effective content management solution is in securing intellectual property so that only right content is available to the right person at the right time. In addition, the issue of "plagiarism" becomes all the more confusing (and critical) in the IT consulting space where we are generally compared to 'bees pollinating flowers'. We move across companies, working at different projects. While there are well-defined guidelines in terms of what we can and cannot take from an organization once the project is completed, putting a restriction on what the consultant internalizes and potentially uses that as an inspiration in another project becomes more murky, unless we have a Men In Black style pen that would erase memory when leaving a project!

My general take is that we are a sum of our influences and our environment. So every action we perform (book we read, music we hear, person we listen to, etc.) will inevitably tend to have its mark something that we may create down the road. So, the best we can do is to ensure that we use the essence of an idea infused with our own thoughts rather than make a copy of something that exists and worse, without attributing it to where it came from.

With that said, I was pleasantly surprised when I read my recent book - "Steal Like an artist by Austin McKleon".



The premise of the book is that there is nothing new to create - everything has been created already. So, all we can do is to read and experience and get influenced by many things and  then come up with our own "remix" or "interpretation". This especially resonated with me, as I recalled a verse in Mahabharatha:

yad iha asti tad sarvatra yad na iha asti na tat kvacit |

imaM samasta-vij~jAna-shAstra-koshaM vidur-budhAH || (thanks Vasu)

"Whatever is here is mentioned everywhere else, and whatever is not here cannot be anywhere else.
This, the wise consider to be the complete collection of science and scriptures."

The book itself seems to be part motivational and part pragmatic, but the author does a pretty good job of balancing the two and not making it sound too preachy or 'self-help-y'. While most of the content is one that you may already have known (evidenced by the many "that's what I'm talking about" moments I had while reading), I think it's still worth a read as he puts them together nicely, supplemented by a number of quotes from famous thinkers/artists/philosophers.

It's a pretty small book (I read the whole thing in two to three hours) and fairly inexpensive and lends itself to giving it away to others easily.

So, at the end, what is the difference between plagiarism and inspiration? I will quote the book in this regard.

Good Theft	Bad Theft
Honor	Degrade
Study	Skim
Steal from many	Steal from one
Credit	Plagiarize
Transform	Imitate
Remix	Rip off

Plagiarism transforms to inspiration if you - "reference many places; go deep into links; understand the concepts; summarize in your own words; cite your sources; augment with examples from your experience."

Duty, Reward, and Performance

I grew up watching the long running Mahabharatha by B.R.Chopra in Doordarshan. One of (if not, THE) great epics of all time, Mahabharatha was fun to watch, especially with bows and arrows with cheesy special effects almost always guaranteed in each episode.

As a kid, this was a good Sunday show with fight sequences and fancy costumes. The story is so captivating that the language barrier (I had even little knowledge of Hindi back then) was not an issue. Of course, I never really understood the philosophy or the moral behind the stories, and I can fairly bet that no one else cared much either.

However, thanks to the magic of TV repetition, some verses - especially the ones in Bhagavad Gita, which is a subset of the epic - were stuck in my head. One of them has stuck with me longer than others.

कर्मन्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भुर मा ते सनगोस्त्वकर्मनि ।।

karmaNi eva adhikAraH te mA phaleShu kadAcana |
mA karma phala hetuH bhU mA te sanghaH astu akarmaNi |

This is an often quoted verse typically to describe the essence of Karma Yoga (the work-oriented way of life - roughly) - like the pithy one-liner in most ads (or a jingle that you can't get out of your head). As in most cases, it has been further condensed into a "do your duty, don't expect results" format.

Over the years, I have come to understand and appreciate the depth in this simple statement. The verse itself translates as follows (thanks to my brother who teaches Sanskrit)

"You are entitled to perform actions but never to its results. The results should not be the motivation for your actions".

The subsequent verse continues to expand on this to say "When you are detached from the results and follow a righteous path (yoga) you will be equipoised regardless of success or failure".

There are similar statements out there such as Alexander Pope's "Blessed is a man who does not have expectations, for he shall never be disappointed". However, I believe there is more to it than just that. 

My personal interpretation is "to do the work that you have undertaken without expecting its benefits" - be it expecting a promotion at the end of the year, kudos from friends, family, or colleagues for a job well-done, or even criticisms that may arise if the job well performed did not end as planned. 

When I have tried to explain this to those who bothered to ask, I've received either skepticism ("You would be stupid not to ask for a promotion - you have to fight for it - that's how it works") or tangential statements ("does it mean you shouldn't have any goals or ambitions in life that you work towards?"). 

I believe that neither are warranted. Yes, it is true that sometimes you have to fight for a promotion, but that doesn't mean you have to do your work to the fullest because you are expecting a promotion. The fight comes AFTER you've worked without expecting a promotion and during annual feedback you are simply stating your case as best as possible - without expecting a result. Similarly, a goal is different from result aka "aspiration" is not the same as "expectation". It's good to aspire for something, but what is important is not to expect that your aspirations are realized because you've worked towards it.

As a New Year dawns, I hope to continue to give my fullest to my work without expecting its rewards - hopefully it won't be as ephemeral as a New Year resolution!