Harish Alagappa

Category: Identity

  • Happy Thursday The 20th

    Happy Thursday The 20th

    A meme from The Simpsons took me on a mental journey through the second law of thermodynamics, The Simpsons, Futurama, and how to deal with existentialism.

    Sometimes you just want to drive out to a desert, sit alone and watch the stars

    Part I: Nature Is Chaos

    The second law of thermodynamics states that everything in the universe tends towards the state of maximum disorder. It is the most fundamental law in the universe. More than gravity, more than quantum mechanics, more than the laws of cricket.

    The British experimental physicist Arthur Eddington famously said:

    “The [second law of thermodynamics] holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

    Also, Arthur Eddington’s 1919 solar eclipse experiment was the first widespread proof that Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity was correct and turned Einstein into a global celebrity overnight. Eddington can thus quote Ye and say, “I made that B— famous” when talking about Einstein.

    Anyway, the second law of thermodynamics is on my mind right now because of a random meme from The Simpsons. Here it is:

    Part II: Thursday the 20th

    The rapper in this meme is parodying Flavor Flav, from the legendary rap group ‘Public Enemy’, who’s been famous for wearing a giant clock around his neck since 1987. Flav says it’s supposed to remind us that time is the most important element in our lives and it’s always ticking away. Remember the second law of thermodynamics? It’s back! In chain form.

    In The Simpsons, the rapper is wearing a gold chain that reads “Thursday the 20th”. So, obviously, Simpsons nerds like to share the image on Thursdays that happen to be the 20th of a month. Simple, right? Wrong. Because those occasions are rarer than you think.

    The 20th of June, 2024 is a Thursday.

    The last Thursdays the 20th before that were last year, in July and April (woo-hoo! 4/20!). Before that, it was October 2022. The next Thursday the 20th is in February 2025.

    This meme requires the kind of dedication and obsession to a joke that’s emblematic of Simpsons fans. It’s also a reminder that time is always ticking away, like Flavor Flav said. This is all your fault, second law of thermodynamics! Ooh, how can I stay mad at you…

    The second law of thermodynamics also applies to The Simpsons. The episode this meme comes from is from season 16 and therefore not one of the million memes that sprung forth from the genius of The Simpsons‘ Golden Age — seasons 2 to 10 (and a few episodes from 11). Those seasons are the greatest television the world has ever known. I would rate them all 10/10. It’s perfect. Down to the smallest detail.

    Part III: Zombie Simpsons

    The Simpsons from season 12 to now (season 32? 33? I don’t know nor do I care) are known as ‘Zombie Simpsons‘ by purist fans like yours truly. Why? Because the show is dead and what you’re seeing is its reanimated corpse shuffling around without a brain.

    While most of Zombie Simpsons is a cavalcade of ‘Worst. Episodes. Ever.’, there are a few rays of sunshine that break through the gloom. These include ‘Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind’, ‘HOMR’, ‘Holidays of Future Passed’ (which would’ve been the perfect time to euthanize the show, but there have been nearly ten more seasons since), and ‘The Book Job’. What was strange about that last one is it’s the second time that Neil Gaiman got involved in a show that I once loved but was in its period of decline only to give it one of its last good episodes. The other is ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ from Doctor Who, in case you were wondering.

    Part 4: Energy vs Entropy

    The second law of thermodynamics says that everything in a closed system tends towards disorder, decay, and chaos. To keep things in their original ordered state requires the input of energy. And when you combine the first law of thermodynamics to that, you realize that the amount of energy required to keep things in their original ordered state will increase with time. Eventually, you will need the energy of the sun to keep a cup of tea warm and drinkable. That’s not hyperbole, BTW. I can explain that statement, but it will make this ridiculously long essay even longer.

    The next Thursday the 20th is 11 months away. I will most likely completely forget the joke on that day. And if not on that one, perhaps on the one in February 2025. Or November 2025. Who tf knows where I’ll be then. Or if I’ll even be alive. But don’t let thoughts of death get you down. People die all the time. Just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow.

    … Well, Goodnight!

    Perhaps The Simpsons were right to stop putting energy into a system tending towards decay and chaos anyway. One day I too will be like Zombie Simpsons. An undead brainless shell on life support that’s eventually cancelled when it’s no longer financially viable.

    Of course, one of the reasons behind the decline of The Simpsons was Matt Groening’s other show, Futurama, took away some of its best talent. And it is from Futurama that I shall imbibe wisdom of how to cope with my mortality.

    In conclusion, the secret three-fold way to dealing with existential anxiety and panic attacks is:

    1. Violent outbursts (not too violent, let’s be reasonable here)
    2. General sluttiness (probably the most fun option)
    3. “Thanks to denial, I’m immortal!” (my default answer)

    Happy Thursday the 20th everyone. I’ll see you all on February 20th, 2025.

  • Zen And The Art of Influencer Marketing

    Zen And The Art of Influencer Marketing

    The world of the 1990s and 2000s seemed to hold immense promise for humanity. The Cold War was over, and technology was bridging barriers, allowing people from opposite ends of the Earth to communicate with one another – offering hope for a more united and compassionate world.

    Well, good news! That promise is all but lost.

    The technology that was meant to unite people from opposite ends of the world has now been turned into a tool to divide people living in the same home. The Cold War was replaced by a Culture War. And perhaps the worst development of all, con artists, grifters, psychopaths, the vapidly vain and the downright inhumane are now heralded as heroes. Meanwhile, social media influencers brag about their material possessions and use that justify their awful behaviour, beliefs, and parasitic existence.

    Fake Plastic Men

    Inhumanity, a complete lack of empathy, naked greed, and bloodlust is supposedly an Alpha/Sigma/Omega/Epsilon mindset. Even though we have stories from thousands of years ago about people searching for the secret to eternal youth and how it made fools of them all, billionaires flaunt their multi-million-dollar anti-ageing procedures, while includes literally taking the blood of young people for themselves.

    The fact that these purveyors of ‘masculine’ influencer content are usually revealed to be frauds, con artists, grifters, literal human traffickers, or children of wealth trying to pass off their nepotism as “self-made” riches does nothing.

    Impressionable idiots are intoxicated by imposter influencers’ inane, immature, and impossible ideals, invariably immersing every iota of their individuality into an intricate, imaginary world of instant gratification and irrational beliefs.

    You have “alpha male” influencers who rail against gender affirming care for trans people on podcasts where they the hawk “nutritional supplement” pills to boost your testosterone. Displaying a staggering lack of self-awareness at best or malicious hypocrisy at worst, these middle-aged uncles take PEDs to maintain their physique, undergo surgeries to look younger and more masculine, and surgically enhance their hairline, jawline, and other body parts to then attack young trans folk for getting gender-affirming surgeries or even taking hormone blockers. THIS is what self-proclaimed alpha men or giga-chads turn out to be:

    We’ve Been Over This Before

    I never thought I would be the one to tell people to hark back to the past, but we’ve been over this before everyone. The ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Phoenicians, Indians, Greeks, Palestinians, Judeans, Chinese, Japanese and every other culture have age-old stories about the transient nature of material wealth and how hoarding money, or gold or resources makes you pretty a terrible human being.

    The Epic of Gilgamesh starts off with the eponymous king abusing his wealth and power in much the same way modern billionaires do, before he is changing his ways and becoming a good guy. Later in the epic, Gilgamesh goes on a quest to become immortal and ultimately learns that it’s impossible, accepting that death comes for us all, even kings.

    Money and looks aren’t everything. Your beautiful bodies will be a stinking rotting corpse one day – there’s no escaping this. Your massive bank account, your lavish mansions and apartments, your Bugatti, none of them will buy you immortality. You may have amassed a cult following among young boys who are extremely familiar with computers but complete idiots when it comes to anything else – but they will die too, and their children will follow a different cult.

    The world was not built by men of iron, who treated everyone around them like dirt and trampled, lied, stole, cheated, raped, and pillaged their way to your idiotic idea of greatness. That’s a version of history created by the people who would simp for these horrible men to feel strong by association. These poor souls existed in the past and exist in the present, simp-ing for men who claim to be the big strong alpha man, but whose bluster hides an obviously and massively fragile ego. Both the leader and the simp are merely sad men trying to live up to impossible standards of masculinity that were thrust upon them without their knowledge. Whose fear of change and an egalitarian world leads them to dive deeper and deeper into justifying horrible behaviour.

    There are eight billion human beings on this planet. None of them is illegal and all of them deserve the same opportunities and resources for life and happiness that around 50,000 people on Earth are all hoarding for themselves while radicalizing impressionable idiots to be their simps – servants, foot-soldiers and grunts who will lick their masters’ boots and die for them even though they get nothing in return in some horrible twenty-first reboot of feudalism.

    It’s just frustrating to see history repeating itself, only worse.

  • A Man Without A Country: Navigating Community and Belonging

    A Man Without A Country: Navigating Community and Belonging

    There’s a question that I dread being asked.

    It’s not “where are the bodies?”, I have my alibi locked and loaded for that one. No, it’s the much more innocuous, “where are you from?”

    If I’m talking to any one of the 6.5 billion people who don’t hail from the nation of my birth, I can usually get away with, “I’m from India”. The problem arises when the question is put to me by a compatriot or someone who knows India well.

    Where my grandma from?

    My father’s ancestors were Tamil-speakers, which is why I have a Tamil surname. But I am not a Tamilian.

    My caste is Brahmin, my sub-caste is Dravida Brahmin, and my sub-sub-caste is Pudur Dravida Brahmin, but I don’t identify with any of those communities, either in belief, spirit or action. For example, Dravida Brahmins are supposed to be strictly vegetarian and let’s just say that I’ve enjoyed a few medium-rare steaks in my time.

    Plus, the obvious caveat that the caste system is a grotesque stain on India’s history and society and one that needs to be eradicated as soon as possible.

    Where am I from?

    I was born in the city of Hyderabad when it was the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh, but, as of 2014, is now the capital of the state of Telangana. I’m neither Andhra nor Telangana.

    I grew up mostly in Bangalore, or Bengaluru as it’s now called. Its name was (barely) changed to cater to the sentiments of Kannada-speakers, seeing that Bangalore is the capital of the state of Karnataka.

    Changing place names to placate ethnolinguistic or religious pride is common in India, which is why Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras became Chennai, and Allahabad became Prayagraj.

    But, coming back to the point, I’m not a Kannada-speaker either and I can’t count myself as a Bangalorean (or Bengalurean?) seeing that I haven’t lived in that city since 2004 when I moved to the national capital territory of Delhi.

    I lived in Delhi and Noida (in the state of Uttar Pradesh) until around 2017. But it’s not where I’m from. To the people there, I was an outsider. A “Madrasi“, which is what people in North India call anyone who hails from the Southern half of the country, because as far as they are concerned all of South India is just one giant city whose name is no longer what it was.

    I then moved to Goa for a year, which is ironically where I felt the most at home. I since lived in Navi Mumbai, but definitely felt like an outsider there too.

    Now, I’m back in Hyderabad and it is like a foreign country or the past: they do things differently here.

    A man from nowhere and everywhere

    So, to conclude, I am a man with no city to call his own. And according to self-appointed standard-bearers of what constitutes “Indian-ness”, I might not even qualify for that moniker.

    I think the answer is that belonging is not a matter of geography anymore. Community is essential to all humans, but we are the first generation of people who have the freedom to choose what community we wish to belong to.

    Some people find this development strange and unnatural and have been fighting it all the way, which I think is one of the many reasons why neo-fascist and hyper-nationalist movements are gaining ground across the world.

    Nevertheless, I remain, as Kurt Vonnegut said in the title of his final work, A Man Without a Country.