While I won’t like to read too much into the effects of recent protests in India here are some observations, thoughts, quotes, etc. While the trigger for this post was the recent protests, this has nothing to do with politics. I will try to be more generic than writing just about recent protests. The goal is to understand and make sense of things rather than sensational political statements, opinions, etc. Separating it out here rather than a related short take because it seemed to get quite lengthy. Also, somewhere in the background must be the idea that we are not just code monkeys. I haven’t watched that talk in last 4-5 years, so its reference here is just based on memory. Maybe I will watch it again soon. Lastly, as I mentioned in the previous post on the book Thinking in Systems, to some extent the book helped me reason about a system (protest dynamics) that I was not familiar with.

  1. While I cannot picture myself chanting the slogans and carrying the placards which the GenZ protesters did, there is no denying that they looked comfortable in their skin even if they appeared unhinged at times. How do you react to a statement like this- A lady student says: ‘This govt is worse at communicating than my ex!’ And yet the statement is succinct and tight as the script of Amitabh’s movie Deewar. She didn’t say my current BF/ GF; indicated that she may dump the govt. As someone said, there’s no filter for this instagram generation. These people were serious (maybe sincere is a better word) and yet unserious the whole time. Their language and ways of expression are not mine. But they made me chuckle, laugh, and think, as well. But looking beyond that, many of them were very articulate. From few second bites to 5 minute or longer rants.
  2. The leaders (students’ bodies) were also articulate. But some terminologies may need to evolve. I don’t think anybody beyond their respective groups cares for left wing words like ‘comrades’, ‘laal salaam’ or right wing abuses like ‘liberaandus’.
  3. This was not the first time such protests happened. It won’t be the last. Why do we see history repeating. Why do similar patterns recur? As I said in a previous note I would like to know more. But even with my limited understanding I can see some similarities. For example, I came across the term ‘ivory towers’ first in relation to the French revolution. And it’s applicable elsewhere, as well. You see ‘haves-vs-have-nots’, ‘power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’, ‘the state having monopoly on violence’, ‘systemic problems’, ‘brutal use of force’, ‘oppressed masses’, ‘social divide’, ‘pent-up anger’, ‘rage’, ‘damage control’, ‘empire strikes back’, ‘ego clashes’, etc. Of course, some of these maybe innate patterns of human behavior, social structure, groups. It’s almost like a guy wanting a girl even when that girl doesn’t care a damn about him. It’s painful to see these patterns repeating. Why can’t we avoid some of them? For example, why can’t we keep egos aside and avoid coercive use of force?
  4. Some things are fickle.
  5. ‘We do not fear those whom we despise.’ This is what Jeeves told Gussie who is afraid of Spode. Later Gussie asks Bertie, ‘Have you ever seen Spode eat asparagus?’ ‘No.’ ‘Revolting. It alters one’s whole conception of Man as Nature’s last word.’
  6. I am sure that these protests won’t bring about any major systemic changes. Naipaul’s Wounded Civilization would prevent me from wearing such rosy glasses of high expectations. But I think such changes are better when gradual, anyway. And some gradual changes will take place.
  7. After French/ Russian revolutions the oppressed had become oppressors (from my very superficial reading about those topics).
  8. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.- Gandhi is great, isn’t he?
  9. ‘A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what.’ Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird.
  10. ‘Cry about the simple hell people give other people– without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too.’ Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird.
  11. Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts. Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird.
  12. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird.
  13. Scholars know of no large society that has been able to dispense with discrimination altogether. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens
  14. Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens
  15. Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux. The culture may transform itself in response to changes in its environment or through interaction with neighbouring cultures. But cultures also undergo transitions due to their own internal dynamics. Even a completely isolated culture existing in an ecologically stable environment cannot avoid change. Unlike the laws of physics, which are free of inconsistencies, every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this process fuels change. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens
  16. The better you know a particular historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens
  17. Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens
  18. Once you start to see the events of the day as parts of trends, and those trends as symptoms of underlying system structure, you will be able to consider new ways to manage and new ways to live in a world of complex systems. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  19. Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  20. The best way to deduce the system’s purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves… Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  21. Shifting dominance of feedback loops… Dominance is an important concept in systems thinking. When one loop dominates another, it has a stronger impact on behavior. Because systems often have several competing feedback loops operating simultaneously, those loops that dominate the system will determine the behavior. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  22. Large organizations of all kinds, from corporations to governments, lose their resilience simply because the feedback mechanisms by which they sense and respond to their environment have to travel through too many layers of delay and distortion. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  23. You can’t navigate well in an interconnected, feedback-dominated world unless you take your eyes off short-term events and look for long-term behavior and structure; unless you are aware of false boundaries and bounded rationality; unless you take into account limiting factors, nonlinearities and delays. You are likely to mistreat, misdesign, or misread systems if you don’t respect their properties of resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  24. It’s endlessly engrossing to take in the world as a series of events, and constantly surprising, because that way of seeing the world has almost no predictive or explanatory value. Like the tip of an iceberg rising above the water, events are the most visible aspect of a larger complex- but not always the most important. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  25. If the news did a better job of putting events into historical context, we would have better behavior-level understanding, which is deeper than event-level understanding. When a systems thinker encounters a problem, the first thing he or she does is look for data, time graphs, the history of the system. That’s because long-term behavior provides clues to the underlying system structure. And structure is the key to understanding not just what is happening, but why. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  26. Everything, as they say, is connected to everything else, and not neatly… The greatest complexities arise exactly at boundaries. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  27. Understanding archetypal problem-generating structures is not enough. Putting up with them is impossible. They need to be changed. The destruction they cause is often blamed on particular actors or events, although it is actually a consequence of system structure… Policy resistance comes from the bounded rationalities of the actors in a system, each with his or her (or “its” in the case of an institution) own goals… One way to deal with policy resistance is to try to overpower it. If you wield enough power and can keep wielding it, the power approach can work, at the cost of monumental resentment and the possibility of explosive consequences if the power is ever let up…The most effective way of dealing with policy resistance is to find a way of aligning the various goals of the subsystems, usually by providing an overarching goal that allows all actors to break out of their bounded rationality. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  28. There are two antidotes to eroding goals. One is to keep standards absolute, regardless of performance. Another is to make goals sensitive to the best performances of the past, instead of the worst. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  29. Escalation comes from a reinforcing loop set up by competing actors trying to get ahead of each other… Escalation, being a reinforcing feedback loop, builds exponentially. Therefore, it can carry a competition to extremes faster than anyone would believe possible. If nothing is done to break the loop, the process usually ends with one or both of the competitors breaking down… The best way out of this trap is to avoid getting in it. If caught in an escalating system, one can refuse to compete (unilaterally disarm), thereby interrupting the reinforcing loop. Or one can negotiate a new system with balancing loops to control the escalation. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems
  30. Not everyone recognizes that addiction can appear in larger systems and in other guises- such as the dependence of industry on government subsidy, the reliance of farmers on fertilizers… The trouble is that the states created by interventions don’t last. The intoxication wears off. The subsidy is spent… the intervention can become a system trap. Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems. (Other points above are quite simple to relate to many protests. But if this last one was a little difficult to relate to then think about addiction to the intervention by courts, parliament, elections.)

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