Zeitgeist - The Spirit of the Times

"So what do you do for living?" is generally the one of our FAQs when we get introduced to someone for the first time. Well ponder a bit at the object of the preposition - "living". It is a concept accepted by the world that we do something for our living and then we do something for our liking. Which means that the activity that we do for our living needn't necessarily be same as the one we pursue as our hobby. Imagine a world where you just pursue your hobby where all of your living needs are being taken care of by technology. Imagine living in a world where technology is the driving force and you are greasing the wheels of human progress by just doing what you like to do.

What would you like to do say entertainment - love to act? So pursue it until you get bored of it. Who will pay you for that? No one. Sounds weird right? If no one is going to pay me, how the hell do you expect that I would be feeding myself? Well, the answer lies in technology. Just like you are passionate about stage performance, there are a bunch of geeks who are passionate about lab performance. They would be the ones inventing robots and machines and automating the world that would help you make your own food. So right from purchasing goods - well wait a minute, lets hit the backspace key; so right from procuring goods to processing them and then finally serving a delicious dish on your table, everything will be done by technology.

"Buddy, robots working for me? I don't have that kind of money." Again, why did we hit backspace? Because in the Lotus Project of the Zeitgeist movement, no one pays for anything. They intend to remove the concept of money from our system. So you do not pay for robots and the scientist working in the lab doesn't pay for your stage performance. Sounds like a barter system isn't it? Well it does to me to. So let us dive ourselves a little deeper into this concept.

"Why is air free and water so cheap?" asks the video documentary of the project. Well we all know the answer that it is available in abundance. No one would really be spending a rupee or a cent for a cubic meter of air, because it is available for free and in abundance. Now air is not available in water asking divers pay for the oxygen cylinders. So what do we do to make sure that the food we talked about short while ago, comes to my table for free? Well, that's right, you know the answer - make it available in abundance. How to do that? The scientists of the lotus project believe that technology has answers to all these questions. And honestly, this doesn't seem impossible from my perspective too.

Again, little difficult to digest right? Let us consider wikipedia's example. Remember the times when we used to spend thousands on the stack of world books occupying an entire wall of our living room! Wikipedia was kneering on you and it said "Ha!". Today we have the best of the knowledge about our world available on internet and that too free. How was it made possible? Well, technology did it, didnt it? Well I would like to rephrase the sentence, 'Effective use of technology did it.' People who are passionate about their own subjects scribble on this online forum where information is validated by people themselves. Who pays all these goons? No one. And yet they do it because they love doing it. There are millions of programmers publishing their codes online. Why do they make it all available for free? Because they love that work. So today, coding is not really a rocket science, because most of it is available online. Then programmers build something over this free code and erect another beauty on it. Together we create marvels in the computing world and device something like Java, Linux or Android. Zeitgeist movement's 'The Lotus Project' is basically transitioning these already achieved benefits in the online world onto the real life. And 'yes' they say, it is possible.

Now consider a nice house on the sea-shore where you can lay on a rocking chair reading your favorite book in the verandah while the sound of sea waves soothe your senses. Who would not like to live that life? So there are tens of thousands of people who would like to own that place. You cannot make such places available in abundance, can you? This is a place where demand will always succeed the supply and then you hit a barrier of economics where you need money to decide a price on the property. "Well I agree", explained Eric - an active member of 'The Lotus Project'. "I agree that our system is not foolproof. All we are saying that this is an initiative and there are good chances that we can come across a good way of living if all of us work in this direction. There are certain loopholes that we would want to plug. But we believe that technology has answers to all of these questions." So that means that the egg is still incubating. We cannot hatch it now.

"I want to cite another example. Talent is rare. You cannot have that in abundance. Everyone plays cricket, but Sachin Tendulkar comes once in a lifetime. Everyone works in science, but Einstein is born once in centuries. How do you encourage the talent if there are going to be no incentives? Today Sachin, a guy brought up from a middle class family would aspire to own a Ferrari and rightfully desire to have a plush bungalow in one of the most expensive places in Mumbai. How can you give him an incentive to play?"

"Well we think that talent doesn't need incentive. We believe that people would pour out their devotion towards their field without any of these incentives." Eric answered although not entirely convincing me. Even the zeitgeist videos about religion and the conspiracy theories are nothing but a mere entertainment they do not convince me.

But looking at the broader picture, I think its worthwhile to keep a tab on this movement so that the next time we meet, I can just ask "So, What do you do" - removing the "living" part from it.


(Image courtesy: BP.blogspot)

3 Idiots is not a five pointer film

3 Idiots



About 3 years back when Raju Hirani released his last film, I remember all the facebook and orkut statuses had been updated to "Bande Mein Tha Dam". It was the after-impact of the film. The story repeated this time with words being changed to "All izz well". Raju does make some impact on the audience everytime he makes a film and he has indeed done a good job in adapting Chetan Bhagat's "5 point someone" to his own "3 Idiots". The reason I am saying 'his own' is because 3 idiots is actually different from the original book.

Ranchordas Shyamaldas Chanchard aka Rancho (Amir Khan) a boy with a different outlook towards the concept of studying, a brain who thinks about applying science rather than merely learning it, got admitted amongst the geeky pundits of the Imperial College of Engineering aka IC where grades and marks determine how successful are you going to be in the road ahead. Veeru Sahasrabuddhe aka Virus (Boman Irani), the director of IC a man with constant wrinkles on his forehead and an ability to make anyone feel small is clueless of what is going to happen in his own college when his staff placed this guy Rancho and 2 more idiots Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi) and Farhaan Qureshi (R Madhavan) in one room of the hostel.



Rancho with a mentality of "Strive for excellance and then success will follow you" is least bothered about grades and results, and on the contrary, Raju and Farhaan however inspired are by Rancho's theory, have to focus on grades due to family pressure and the outcome is contrary. Rancho someone least bothered about grades stands first in the class while the other set of idiots come last and second last respectively. Rancho's answer behind this is the word 'passion'. He coaxes Farhaan to pursue his own passion of photography where he will stand way ahead of others. Raju on the other hand is lost in the race of grades and has long forgotten the word 'excellence'. Both the guys at the end rectify their flaws and follow what Rancho had to say for them. It is a happy graduation day picture, except that Rancho has disappeared from the set. The entire movie is in the search of this guy Rancho who disappeared from the graduation day 10 years back and the story above features in bit and pieces as the flashback scenes.


Raju has very well captured the student life, the race for grades, the student superstitions, the student pressure, the student suicides etc painting the education system very well on his canvass of 3 Idiots. It was a lively experience reminiscing the good old student days where we have lived parts of these lives in bit and pieces. Songs are very well made expect that I would say 'Zoobie Doobie' was a mistake.

C.K.Muraleedharan has done a wonderful job in his cinematography capturing Laddhak, Shimla, Manali and the IIM Bangalore campus as the IC at it's brilliance.

Now going back to my first expression, the movie is different from the original book - the reason being, it is a film. Raju has made it filmy with his typical melodramatic masala and obnoxious scenes where Amir Khan delivers a baby using a vacuum cleaner. The book I guess is Chetan's own story and hence much closer to reality. Ryan the hunk, Hari the guy with Prof Cherian's girl and Alok are 5 pointers and thus below average graders. None of them top the class. So to sum it up, Chetan has done a good job of bringing out an important real life topic while Raju has done a good job in putting it on the reels.

Rating: ***1/2