Musings of a White Haired Teenager

  Living the Post-Modernity: In a recent conversation, the name of Baudrillard came up, followed by a discussion of how in the 1980s and 1990s there was an interest in genuine scholarship, research, debate as compared to the frenzy of the discourse-driven post modern montage of images and sensations that pass by – never sticking – because they are not supposed to stick. If it stuck, and if there was a fixity and authenticity of meaning, then we would still be in the modernity and not graduated to post-modernity. Not too long ago, “post modernity”  was the theoretical future – and people like me who were studying the oncoming phenomenon hypothesized that we would someday live in a World where all things stable will be destabilized, all meanings will become meaningless, reality will be completely constructed, and unscrupulous “thought leaders” will try to create passing fads that the numbed and stunned population will believe to be true; in most parts, this was a fictional futur...

How to Lose Friends and Disregard People is an obvious take off from the famous book by one of the most read authors in the World who opined about how to make friends and influence people. Yesterday, walking down Park Street, I saw the book still being sold among the wares of the iconic street bookshops, and I started to wonder if there was a need to, nowadays, write something about how to ensure that people can be disregarded and got rid of. There was much demand for Dale’s book because making friends requires work and dedication while influencing people is much more than what sensation-creating "influencers" do on various digital platforms. Dale Carnegie was motivated to author the book because he saw the hunger and the need in people to find empathy and curiosity to learn about others. That was then, but now, I see the carcasses of slaughtered friendships and people yearning to get “out” because friendships are merely opportunities, and when a new person offers the opportu...