It is 15 years of Akshara Livelihoods, giving their little to the world, in their own small ways. Livelihoods Lifeworkers in coexistence. In Notes, Books, Portal, Conversations, Journeys, and Cohorts. In discussing and moving to India 100. Via Hope, Faith, Promise, Love, and Coexistence. Keeping our inspirers and influencers in all our senses intact.
Does the art of loving, whose reality counts, pedagogy of the oppressed matter still? Are Collectives and Kurien still relevant? How do we support more and more young professionals? How do we engage with young minds and hearts across our remotest villages, informal settlements, universities, and the most privileged and underprivileged spaces? How can we expect communities to share their vulnerabilities without sharing ours? Are we missing looking inwards, internal transformation drawing on our experiences, practices and influences? How can we remain committed to persist with our very ‘small’ acts and actions of love? Let us be conscious that these ‘small’ things are seeding the biggest transformations, without us knowing fully.
Only a small % of enterprises have a decent life and most do not want to grow. Informal markets with local nuances are still the dominant want that supports ‘small’ enterprises with local nuances is ‘our way’.
We see start-ups coming in hordes. Most are also disappearing very quickly. More and more people in general and women in particular are joining the start-up arena, as co-founders, co-investors, coaches, etc. Their nurturing instinct is mothering their start-ups and enterprises. Their templates are useful for all to work on. Let us try and learn some of these. Let the woman in each one of us take charge of nurturing and mothering.
Many organizations failed to scale because their HR models were not right; not able to get the right talent; not able to get rid of the dead wood; had poor cost management; lack of robust reliable tracking, control, information and financial systems; low/unclear performance allocation, traceability and accountability, etc.
We seem to be heading several disruptions in how we transact with the world. We need to be coming closer to nature as much as possible, as early as possible, and at the same time. Artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented realities would change our transactional and customer relations landscape. Coding and call centres would change significantly. The Internet of things, IoT may front-end more automation, efficiencies, and faster pace. Blockchains may front-end as direct as possible transactions making value chains shorter and reducing intermediaries. Old ways may have to give way to new ways and we may see reduced life spans for enterprises unless they are extremely agile and adaptable. HR numbers in enterprises may dramatically come down. Decentralized, hybridized work with work away from offices embedded in it may become a way.
AI – ChatGPT, how does it work. It is a “large language model” (LLM), finding the next word/token as the core, with syllogistic, computational logic, semantic and syntactic grammar, and machine learning tied up. Image recognition, 175 billion (in 400 layers) neural nets similar to the human brain (~100 billion neurons, with pulses at 1000 times a second), training them through exposure to examples; Art of Training incrementally, and memorization with variations; unsupervised automated learning, deep learning; reducing loss/cost functions with fixing the weights for these neural nets through Transformer and Paying Attention Architecture; Embeddings, Characterization and Tokens; and Reasonableness principle.
For example, my verbal track – speaking in classes, meetings, workshops, zooms, etc. – 10M words/year; letters, e-mail, WhatsApp, etc – 1M words/year; reports, proposals, published notes, etc – 100,000 words/year. ChatGPT’s neural nets are at least 20,000 times larger. This is its power and is likely to go up.
Do we realize we are in the sixth and final era – the dark energy era?
While AP is waiting to notify its state natural farming policy, Tamil Nadu has gone ahead to release its organic farming policy.
Women are the backbone of the food systems. If we are working for its transformation, we need to work with them, we need to charge them and we need to let them have the agency for it. Women have the nurturing instinct.
Kutch Mahila Vikas Sanghatan KMVS fame Sushma Iyengar concludes: Women had deep locational and geological knowledge; deeper conviction to find sustainable solutions, and more gumption to counter government inefficiencies and corruption. Women’s sangathan serves as a space for collective action, reflection, and self-realisation. Without all these, with limited focus on economic well-being, has the soul gone off? Why can’t we facilitate men’s SHGs too?
Can we live on an average Indian income? Rs. 500 per day. Take out rent and related costs, amounting to a third. Rs. 350 a day. Can we live on the poverty level income? Rs. 100 a day. Let us understand and experience the reality on the ground.
Do we know how to ask a question to get an answer, appropriate, right answer? Do we ask – prashn, or pariprashn? Do we pariprashn – ask with absolute humility to know, to learn and to follow?
Are our biological processes optimized for laziness? Are we not targeting more free time? Our advanced countries are reducing work time, now to less than 30 hours a week. In many states in India, it is just 36-39 hours a week, and the Indian Government seeks 40-43 hours a week. Thus laziness could be ‘smartness’; ‘efficiency’; high ‘adrenaline’; high ‘leverage’; coping with ‘stress’; taking breaks to recharge; wandering for long-term goals; doing good for mental health; healing by time; and body, heart, mind and soul’s ways of telling us to slow down. If we are perpetually lazy, we may have to dig deep. Time-to-time laziness is fine and needs to be embraced and taken in stride. Smarter decisions, innovations and peace are possible.
Can we make haste to succeed and go and be with nature, resonate with it, and spend time enjoying its passage? How do we remain in the present? By doing whatever comes our way and if not, closing our eyes and observing our breath? Exhalation and inhalation. Trying not to think, analyse, and fantasize. Keeping our focus back on breath, if we wander into the past or future. Soon, we will master this. Gradually, we need not observe the breath to be in the present. It becomes a habit. Meditation becomes a habit. We slip into mediation whenever we have nothing in the present.
We have an aura beyond our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being. Our aura announces us and our intentions without saying a word, or doing an act. Our gut feelings, and instincts are often more right than logical and rational conclusions. If it does not sound/feel right, we need to be cautious. We need to triple-check. We need to ask our coexistential partners to check how they feel.
Our views and desires are not always conscious. Some are in our subconscious and unconscious. And therefore, we may have contradictory desires and views. For example, we may work hard to satisfy the desire for change (conscious) and repeatedly fail to satisfy the resistance to change (unconscious). Can we free ourselves from the psychological structures of the society we live in? Can we free ourselves? Can we draw our personality, and aspirations and compare them with what we are today? Can we articulate what we do in life if we have a guarantee that we succeed? Then, can we go after them, try and be joyous?
Yes, we can. Flowing in the present, with our role defined together is our way. The flow of N. For 7L.
Join us in the yoga of playing coexistence co-living co-action in nature –nityarangayoga for 7L.
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