9 to 5, Brand-building and Immortality
For better or worse, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many things. That includes the perennial question that’s always boiling under the surface — what am I doing with my life? This is a question that isn’t necessarily a first-world problem, and I felt compelled to introspect it through this post.
How prescient was this tweet? It precisely captures my current state of mind, and I’m sure of many others.
Perhaps one of the best explanations for this state of mind comes from my all-time favorite movie “The Matrix” by Agent Smith, as seen here :
In this scene, Smith begins to interrogate Morpheus by saying:
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
This is the crux — Humanity requires something to work towards and struggle to progress. We need challenges to overcome. If we were “Gods,” there’d be nothing to work towards, leading to existential questions about the meaning and purpose of life, as I mentioned above.
While I am far from being a God of any sort, I struggle against pleasure precisely because my life is good (touchwood). After spending all my childhood and most of my adult life working towards something, I have finally reached a zone where my basic necessities are more than adequately met. I need to find newer challenges to drive me forward and make me feel alive. It is indeed hard to feel gratitude when things are going well.
Of late, I’ve been trying a few different things — getting better at Chess, identifying Rāgās in Carnātic music, working towards writing a book, and trying (and so far failing) to start a podcast. These pursuits require a dedication to learning and ample time to explore, hard to come by for anyone who works a demanding “9 to 5” job.
Now, while I fully understand and appreciate all that my job provides me, I am also cognizant of its limitations and the associated compromises. I am sure many enjoy working a regular job as well. However, for someone whose interests are diverse, the job cannot solely satisfy the need for creative pursuits. Eventually, it builds up and leads one to seek an escape from the status quo and find something “meaningful .”
If you’re following me up to this point, then the next obvious question on your mind should be — How do we solve the “9 to 5” problem and invest time in things we want to pursue while continuing to provide for ourselves and our family?
I might have recency bias due to discussions with my cousin and reading this article by the fantastic Balaji Srinivasan; nevertheless, I think there are only two solutions to this problem — Brand-building or….. Immortality.
Before you think I am crazy, let me focus on the brand-building part first.
Suppose one wants to flee the clutches and monotony of a regular job. It leads one to think of an alternative that can eventually blossom into a career they transition into. Your creative pursuits are your keys to those alternatives. Look around you — Do you see any billionaires working a regular job? How do they invest their time and energy? The same goes for any artist/entrepreneur/innovator/educator etc. If you don’t want to work for a boss, you’ve to be your own boss. And that requires dedication to craft, willingness to take risks, ability to deal with failure, relentless pursuit, and luck, of course.
I see people around me do this all the time, so I know it’s not impossible. Building a brand based on something we care about deeply and monetizing it is the most reasonable way to channel our creative pursuits to provide meaning and sustenance to our life. Spending the limited time we have in this way will also feel more fulfilling than a “9 to 5” job. So if you are also feeling stuck with where you are currently, go ahead and give your hobbies a chance!
There is, however, a crazier and more fundamental way in which this problem can be solved. All of our actions, goals, and plans in life revolve around the urgency occurring from the finite amount of time one has in a lifetime. We want to travel, spend time with our loved ones, pursue our interests and not spend our best years only slogging away because our time here is limited. But, what if we eliminate the finiteness of our existence? What if we can become immortal?
Leaving aside the leaps and bounds we’ve made in gene therapy and reversing aging as elaborated here, just as a thought experiment, if we could become immortal, then we’d be looking at the world and our lives very differently. These immortal “Transhumans” would be in a plane of thought which we cannot comprehend, with very different motivations in life. For one, we no longer would have an urgency to pursue anything given that we’re going to be around forever. Our jobs would be meaningless, our aspirations would differ, and we may even stop propagating the human gene by reproduction. Simply put, it would fundamentally change the way our species exists and interacts, leading to a new dawn in the era of science and technology.
While sci-fi movies have deliberated these outcomes in various ways, reality might soon be catching up to them. Many years ago, in my first ever blog post, I was already contemplating pursuing my interests, taking risks, and not living a routine life, and letting time slip away. While it’s sobering to think I haven’t really changed much since, what more than the possibility of immortality to kick me into action?
