God is a metaphor for the universe

Me: “I have a boyfriend” Him: “Oh right. You did say you have a boyfriend” Him: “My bad. Won’t bother you again” Him:  “Why aren’t you replying?” Him: “Fine. Be selfish” Rant alert: Selfish? Dude, I’m saving you the embarrassment. I’m actually looking out for you because I know one-sided love hurts(Not that what you’re feeling is ‘love’.You probably were just looking to get laid. That’s fine.) Now, I had to use the politest, friendliest excuse in the book to get you off my back. I have used the ’I have a boyfriend’ card to get out of many sticky situations simply because many men simply cannot take ‘no’ for an answer. They will persist. They will even ask me what is lacking in them: Am I too old for you? Do you only like younger guys? Is it my moustache? My beard? Enough movies have taught them that when a girl says ‘no’, it’s actually a yes. With enough persistence Haseena Maan Jayegi(which by the way, is a title song from a Bollywood movie of the same name). ‘I’m not interested’ is almost an insult. There are men who have poured acid on the same face who they claimed to be in love with. There are men who have raped and murdered a girl who rejected their advances. There are men who have fired shots. There are actual real-life cases of women who were punished for rejecting men’s advances. This exists in 2017. Let that sink in.

Grey hair is a sign of wisdom, a life lived. It should be flaunted with pride, just like tattoos, freckles, wrinkles, moles and birthmarks.

Well, I’m not working. I’ve found myself a few freelance gigs and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my six years of working 9+ hours a day including the commute. Because I'd been living quite a different lifestyle when I was working 9-5+ hours, this sudden transition to a freelancer's life has exposed something I overlooked before.

Since the moment I quit my high paying job, I’ve been markedly more careful with my money. Not stingy, just a little hesitant to pull out my wallet. For instance, I’ve stopped buying expensive to-go coffees, because they are never as good as homemade filter coffee.  I've become cautious of not just the big, extravagant stuff but also small-scale, casual, promiscuous spending on stuff that doesn’t really add a whole lot to my life. Because, as a freelancer, I won’t actually get paid for another two weeks.

In hindsight,  I’ve done this one thing promptly during the time I was well-employed — spending happily during the 'flush times' and then waiting for the ding of a text message from my bank on Pay Day.  I suppose I did it because I feel I have a certain stature of a well-paid professional, I have a disposable income, which seems to entitle me to a certain level of wastefulness. There is a curious feeling of power you get when you drop a couple of hundreds without a trace of critical thinking. It feels good to exercise that power of the dollar when you know it will 'come back' pretty quickly anyway. What I was doing wasn't unusual at all. Everyone else seems to be doing this. In fact, I think I’ve only returned to the non-consumer mentality after having done it so much. 

One of the most surprising discoveries I made during recent times was that back then, I had a lot of money but little time. There is no time to 'waste' and I felt the pressure of every activity wanting to 'count' in some way. Even the few minutes of a break were fleeting and were spent counting the hours until I had to be at work again. Spending more than 8 hours felt wasteful as the actual hours I spent actually working was about 4-5 and I had to merely be physically present for the rest of the time. I liked to come to work early and leave early, but no one seemed to get that.   

A Culture of Unnecessaries

A lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the masses by big businesses(in a culture where consumerism, capitalism are seen as signs of human progress). Companies in every industry seek to encourage the habit of casual or non-essential spending whenever they can. In the documentary The Corporation, a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used behavioral psychology studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.This marketing campaign alone represents many millions of dollars that were spent because of demand that was manufactured.

“You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying your products. It’s a game.” ~ Lucy Hughes, co-creator of “The Nag Factor” 

This is only one small example of something that has been going on for a very long time. Big companies don't make millions by earnestly promoting the virtues of their products, they instead made it by creating a culture where millions of people buy way more than they need and try to chase away dissatisfaction with money.The documentary Zeitgeist explores similar themes and the hidden truths of money, banks, politics, and power.

Look around you. How much stuff is in your basement or garage that you haven’t used in the past year?

We buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill our childhood vision of what our adulthood would be like, to broadcast our status to the world, and for a lot of other psychological reasons that have very little to do with how useful the product really is. In fact, enough movies, art, books(1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World) and literature have pointed this out.

“We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” - Dave Ramsey, Author 

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.” - Tyler Durden in Fight Club

The real reason for the 40-hour workweek.

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture that doesn't stop consuming is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the 'normal lifestyle'. Under these working conditions, people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends: an arrangement that makes us more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce. We'd rather pay extra bucks and get instantly gratified than spend time doing it - it could be something as simple as baking a cake or woodworking. The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.

I’ve only been freelancing for a few months, but already I’m noticing that I have more time for certain activities: walking to a place instead of driving there, reading, meditating and personal writing. I really didn't have time for these activities back when I was working full-time and even when I did, the short duration loomed like the sword of Damocles. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is exercise. It’s also the last thing I want to do after dinner or before bed or as soon as I wake up, and that’s honestly all the free time I used to have on a weekday.

When I had a lot more money and no time, I'd think twice about spending the day wandering through a national park or reading my book on the beach for a few hours. Doing these kinds of things was out of the question. Doing either one would take most of my precious weekend days!

This seems like a problem with a simple answer: work less so I’d have more free time. I’d already learned that I can have a fulfilling lifestyle with lesser money than I was making with my last position.

Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in the advertising industry and most others. You work 40-plus hours or you work zero. Clients and contractors are all firmly entrenched in the standard-workday culture, so it isn’t practical to ask them not to ask anything of me after lunch time, even if I could convince my employer not to.

If technology has upgraded, why are we still wrecked by 8+ hour work days?

The eight-hour workday was developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays. As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries were able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays. 

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it creates a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious and too tired and mentally exhausted to do anything else outside of work.

We’ve been led to a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it seems like something is always missing. Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom.  

Can you imagine what would happen if all of us stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The economy would collapse and never recover.

All of our well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution, and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be 'healthy', we have to remain unhealthy, our mental health shaky and our impulses weak. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.

The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’ most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something.

Parkinson’s Law is often used in reference to time usage: the more time you have been given to do something, the more time it will take you to do it. It’s amazing how much you can get done in 20 minutes if 20 minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer. Most of us treat our money this way. The more we make, the more we spend. It’s not that we suddenly need to buy more just because we make more, only that we can, so we do. In fact, it’s quite difficult for us to avoid increasing our standard of living ( rate of spending) every time we get a raise. I don’t think it’s necessary to shun the whole ugly system and go live in the woods, as Christopher McCandless did. But we could certainly do well to understand and be aware what big commerce really wants us to be. They’ve been working for decades to create millions of ideal consumers, and they have succeeded. Unless you’re a real anomaly, your lifestyle has already been designed.

Is this you?

The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by.

1. You can wear clothes you really like to wear.

Stained T-shirts and pajamas take you from day to night to day again. This soothing outfit will protect your soft, fleshy body from food crumbs.

2. You eat when you're hungry not when it's Lunch Break. "Three square meals" is a social construct. There's always a rush to eat lunch, to take a break. There isn't a single moment that your fat mouth can't be full of food. Dinner for breakfast. Breakfast for lunch. Ice-cream for second lunch. Cheese for dinner. 3.  You don't have to make small-talk with co-workers. Small-talk is frustrating and a real energy-sapper. Fake-smiling and listening to trash talk give a headache. In the peaceful silence of home, you'll never have to force a conversation again. The biggest perk is spending more time with your pets.

4. More time to exercise. Commuting and long office hours makes what hard to do even harder. Sleep is precious and those few extra minutes in the morning are reserved for taking micro-naps. It's good to have the option to just pull out a yoga mat and do something which otherwise hangs over your head like the sword of Damocles.

5. You can work anytime.

The controlled schedule of office-life is bitter. Your entire day is a race to finally be calm enough to go to sleep.

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ”

I wanted you to win. Why? Not because it’s time America had its first female president. Because having a female president is not a big deal(Remember Pratibha Patil?) Having a capable, qualified president also who happens to be a woman is. Let’s not forget that the world’s first governments started off by not allowing women to vote; a subsequent fight for a right which should have never been denied in the first place.

There’s this underlying belief in Indian men, and in society that women make bad leaders. They are either tyrants(Indira Gandhi/Margaret Thatcher) or marionettes(Pratibha Patil). India has tons of women leaders who are misogynistic. They make me believe that women’s worst enemies are not some menfolk(Looking at you, Donald Trump), but other women. They are just shitty women leaders. They were elected and chose to be a minister because the cabinet needed to fill the reserved seats for women.

It’s hard to describe decades of systemic gender oppression and the fight for equality in one skimpy sentence. However, it’s easier to describe it by defining what it’s not. Here are 10 ways feminism is being misunderstood, misguided and misused in 2016:

1. Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl

2. Thinking that being female is about appearance, hair, makeup etc so it reinforces a gender stereotype that in turn disadvantages women.

3.Thinking that #Ladies Nights and #NightclubSexism are empowering.

4.Behaving like a man and asking to be treated like a man. 

5. Making ads like this while routinely exploiting staff, terminating pregnant employees and not having a Plus size section in their stores.

6. Affluent women, media influencers and patriarchal women claiming to know what's right for less-previleged woman and the general masses.

7. Voting for Hilary just because she’s a woman.  If you would not  vote for Hilary Clinton if she was a man, then you should not vote for her BECAUSE she's a woman.

8. Women slut-shaming other women.

9. Using misandry(male-bashing) to counter misogyny

10. Getting naked and posting nudes in the name of #feminism.

11. France banning burqa for muslim women.

12. Starting and following movements such as #WomenAgainstFeminism.  Half knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

13. Twitter accounts such as these: https://twitter.com/WeNeedFeminlsm

14. Hating on male babies and males in general. This twitter account: https://twitter.com/debdouble

There is nothing empowering about ladies nights.

Get this: Bars and pubs offer free alcohol to ladies on select days. Yes, women get alcohol without paying for it. But the whole reason it’s free is not because women are paid less then men. Or because the pub owners want to do something nice for women.