Empathy

Empathy - Magic bullet to cure all problems !

Is that an eye-catching title ? Or more like a silly way to catch attention to something like a sale ? Never mind ! :) As a Mom  of a school going child .. one thinks perennially about schooling / classes / tuition / education system / school boards / subjects and the like.

And while there are so many things one learns in school and so many things that get 'unlearnt' - like the joy of learning while pursuing marks - I feel that if there is one thing that I could add to the syllabus - I would add the teaching and learning of empathy.

Now this does not sound very earth shaking does it ? But it would bring about a paradigm shift in the thinking process and the way life itself is handled.

Why empathy ?

• For one thing is is not wishy-washy like sympathy.
• Secondly it involves some amount of imagination and courage. It makes us go beyond ourselves and into the shoes of the person across whom we are sitting.
• It is more than conscience too.
• It is not connected with religion at all. So no dogmas need follow.

Yes all other moral values like - honesty, compassion, discipline, contentment ( vs avarice ), industriousness , respect for others etc are good but I would think empathy is at the root of all these values.

Think about it -

• If the creator of the Ponzi scheme was empathetic - he may not have ended up looting the life savings of so many old retired people. He/She would have understood the devastation that loss would bring about.
• Domestic violence would not be an issue b'cos the person involved would understand the physical and mental pain the victim would feel.
• Women complaining about the glass ceiling and discrepancy in wages for the same work would be heard with an open mind.
• Dowry deaths especially the heinous burning would be a thing of the past.
• We would perhaps switch to "Ahimsa Silk" so as to not kill the millions of silk worms for our usage. Ditto with animal furs...
• Child Abuse would make the person feel so abhorrent that it would not come to play at all ....
• Human trafficking - what is that ? :)
• We would have fire escapes that work, more water works in villages where women have to go miles for water, roads that don't vanish in monsoons, teenagers who think it is great to weave around aging trucks with no power steering more circumspect.
• Who would there be to teach a guy to walk into a railway station and fire bullets into unsuspecting people ?
• Nobody would wake up after an operation with a wrong missing body part.

... And so on ......

Empathy -  would lead to being more responsible. More open to negotiations. Not just expecting without taking responsibility. Ameliorating problematic situations. It would make us better humans. And therein lies the crux.

Writing and Musing ...

It has been a long gap. I have not taken time to write a blog post for eons. It is definitely not b'cos I lack ideas but sometimes ideas are like butterflies - hard to pin down. And who in their right mind would want to pin down butterflies ? :)

I have this habit of of jotting my ideas everywhere ! On little bits of paper , mostly from old envelopes or pamphlets that come inside the newspaper - just my little bit to help reduce paper wastage. Or on my textbook wrappers :) Of course the problem is once I finish reading that textbook - the ideas go along with the textbook wrapper ! :)

I can already hear the clamor - get Evernote already ! And I do have Evernote on my phone - but I get so damn tired to typing on my phone ! Whether it is the 3*9 keyboard format or the regular typing keypad - I think typing on a phone is really terrible. I am a 10-finger typist - so typing on a laptop or scribbling on a piece of paper is any-day preferable to inputting on the phone. Again there is of course an answer to that - I could use the typepad that can take in my handwriting ! Or the speech to note option .. see ?? Guess I just prefer to scribble on bits of paper ! :) To this - I can always have a mini-notepad handy ! I do manage to keep the most important pieces in my drawer , which is a jumble of dusty odds and ends.

The way I look at this simple chaos is - If the same topic keeps knocking on my brain many times , it takes shape almost unconsciously writes itself. So that topic has to make through the first pass from just a few thoughts floating around my brain in a vague way to something concrete that generates a mind map ! Lately I find that many topics have died under this discern barrier that I maintain and so to some extent while I classify my blog as a slow-blog -I think I will allow some amount of spontaneity to creep in too. [ Now how is that for impulse? ] Not all mind maps are created equal so while some topics do touch a chord, many do not ! That is a risk one takes.

I also feel the need to be in the mood to write ! :) From the time I remember I have been writing ( hey no giving my brick bats for the quality of my writing ... I know there are vast areas for improvement ) stories while in school, diaries and I maintained many .... and letters .. I was a mean letter writer. I used to send pages and pages to my penpals .. who were prolific writers themselves ... 20-26 pages per letter was the norm ! And when whittled down to the serious writers, I had about 20 pen pals with whom I corresponded regularly through out my college days. :) It got to a stage where I started using tissue-thin onion paper to write since paying for the postage of those thick volumes was becoming too much for my student budget ! :)

Getting back to this post - I am writing as I am thinking ! Something I used to do more often before and now do so mainly when replying to mails of friends. The downside of this are many but I am not going to get into that - otherwise this post will never be published ! :)

Generation Milestones ....

Sometimes it seems like ......  I have lived way too too long .... :)

• I get a dejavu of dejavu !! Not only do I feel I have done this before .. I feel I have felt the same dejavu before too ... ugh ! :)
• When I hear "Going down" ..... I know it refers to bending from the stiff waist to pick up things from the floor .... ;)
• Master Health Check-ups are impending doom/horror stories or torture chambers to be lead into ...
• I know too many people who have more than a passing acquaintance with doctors ...
• 25% of the talk with friends seems to revolve around health related issues, medical insurance and life insurance...
• The newspaper headlines about increasing taxes, petrol prices and crime rates never seem to change ! 

And the last .....

• Going .......... going ......... going ........... gone ... sounds ominous .... !!

Book Review - Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom

It has been sometime since I wrote a book review. I was going through a book hiatus .. at least as far as non-fiction was concerned. I found myself picking up books and after reading the blurb finding they did not interest me in the least !!! So back to the shelves they went !!!

In this involuntary  moratorium I saw "Brandwashed" .. it looked interesting enough that it funneled through .. after all Behavior Economics is a fascinating area to explore !

As far as this book is concerned  I do not think the information is particularly new - much of the material is known. Neither do I think that the marketing techniques are hidden tricks .. save for a few. However it is the specificity of the cases that is interesting.

Some snippets -

1. We do know that music influences us .. but the author shares details of how changing the tempo of the music changed how the customers viewed the time taken to be served in the customer complaints queue.

2. By doubling the size of your shopping cart, you end up buying up to 40 percent more.

3. Malls and certain kinds of stores become  the “cool” hangout location — this is engineered by marketers, who often hire sexy, good-looking kids to stand casually in front of the entrance. Miraculously, the area is soon packed with other kids !

4. Ever heard of Listerine and Halitosis ??? Today Pharmaceutical companies do not market only for known terrible conditions like cancer, Alzheimer's but create conditions we never thought of - Restless leg syndrome? Fibromyalgia? Who even knows such things exist?

5. Supermarkets sprinkle select vegetables with dew drops of water — these sprinkler like drops serve
as a symbolic - of freshness and purity ! It may that the vegetables so doused with mist may rot faster due to this treatment !

6. Colas and other beverages have water drops on them - what those little drops signal to us subconsciously is that the beverage is not just cold but ice-cold, making it more tasty and refreshing. And those little drops kick-start the brains’ craving impulses to have a cool drink !

7. Mommy Guilt is a ploy used to  sell to new mothers. There are so many ways to make her feel inadequate and of course there is an endless array of products - from LeapFrog computers for young children to organic baby food to postnatal exercise videos to baby gates to child proof cabinet locks to ointments to safety bath-time thermometers to pre-school educational toys and baby video monitors to alleviate all that guilt !

8. The book claims that Apple’s iPhone has become the most effective tool in human history to mollify a fussy toddler - because an Apple store is made to resemble an international day care.

9. That marketers are trying to reach younger and younger children .. is nothing new ."Pester Power" [ refers to children's ability to nag their parents into purchasing items they may not otherwise buy ] is nothing to be sneezed at - it is a very powerful marketing technique !

So marketers want to catch the kids while in the womb itself ! :)

A shopping chain sprayed J&J baby powder in the baby clothing area and added soothing music and a smell of cherries... pregnant women were exposed to this calm atmosphere while browsing. The end result ? After birth when the mothers entered the mall ....  if their kids were fractious they became noticeably quieter ..!!

10. Games are designed to be addictive and hard to quit - by literally re-wiring the brain's reward system circuit... and turn people / children who use them into brand ambassadors for a brand or product.
The more points you win, the more levels unlock, keeping you in the never-ending pursuit of higher and higher highs and bigger and better rewards.

Think -   Farmville, Mortal Kombat, Mafia Wars, Playstation , Xbox.

Also - Food companies sell junk food using multimedia games, online quizzes, and cell phone apps.

11. One of the earliest ads I remember watching and being fascinated with is the Alka-Seltzer ad where 2 tablets are dropped into crystal clear water in a glass. And what that did - although in reality only one tablet is required , most consumers drop two tablets !!
And guess where this kind of marketing is used - Chocolate. Cheese puffs. Cookies. Chips !

"No one can eat just one !" - Does that ring a bell ?

Of course it was disturbing to read that many of these foods also contain habit-forming substances like MSG, caffeine, corn syrup, and sugar.

12. The author compares royalty to a long term high end brand - "Every single royal family in the world knows that the best—and quickest — way to boost its popularity ratings is  to host a royal wedding. [Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton :)) ] A close second? The arrival of a royal baby !"

Now this was something I did not know before !! :)

13. Digital footprints - This covers a whole gamut of details that help marketers target the exact loan one is looking for , the kind of products one wants to buy , the general profile of a person and his/her shopping habits - This is nothing new - we know .. every "like" we click is helping form a demographic profile of ourselves that help companies target us with perfectly tailored ads.

In fact just send a mail with a specific topic in gmail and see the "More About" - links .. they will reflect your message content ! Write about baking and links for the same will appear ... write about prep schools and
see how the links change !!!!

14. In what could well be the future of marketing - peer recommendation is where we take the word of our friends in trying out brands. A Hollywood movie The Joneses is about a fake family of stealth marketers who move into an upper-middle-class community and begin to market brands to their neighbors covertly and successfully.

The author did a real life experiment mimicking this concept and the results are very compelling ... !!

All in all a very good read ....... !!!