Sex talk

My grandmothers were married in their early teens.  My grandfathers were also only teenagers--only a couple of years older.  It was basically child-marriage, which was the norm back then.  My paternal grandmother delivered her first child when she was only 15!

Now, child marriages are illegal, thankfully.  Girls aren't condemned to be barefoot and pregnant, and they can grow up to become rocket scientists too.

But, the new social and legal structure for marriage does not mean that the reproductive biology has changed.  The hormones begin to kick in, and boys and girls are fully ready to have sex in their teens.  In fact, puberty appears to have been fast-forwarded:

Puberty generally begins between eight and 13 years in girls and nine and 14 years for boys. However, a number of global studies suggest the average age of puberty is falling.

The hormones are kicking and screaming, and porn is all around.  In traditional and conservative societies like India's, this can be a recipe for challenging times for boys and girls alike.

Living with parents tightly circumscribes the sexual lives of teenagers in most countries, including the US.  I have always jokingly hypothesized that this sexual urge is the biggest reason that American teenagers seek their independence after they turn 18 years old.  However, COVID-19 forced many of them to return to their parents' homes.  Even if they were out of the nests, quarantine and social distancing made sexual relations rather challenging, if not impossible.

Now, we have the vaccines, and young people here in America are eager to have sex.  However, more sex will not mean more kids; the fertility rate has been falling.  Within a decade or two, we will find out if this is good or bad news.

The contemporary world is a different planet compared to my grandmothers' teenage years. 

Armed and dangerous ... and headed into the shit

A few months ago,  I participated in a march to express my worries over climate change and to urge action.

Very few young people were in the march.  We were a bunch of geezers.

The march went past quite a few apartment buildings where young people were partying.  A couple of them waved out to us from a balcony where they were partying.

Here we were, middle aged and older, marching to make the world a better place for young people, but the youth didn't care enough to protest!

Beer, sex, and Instagram beat climate change protests!

If that's how it is here in liberal, progressive, and green Oregon, then should we be surprised that the US has not done any damn thing about climate change?

We witnessed yet another regression in this when the fucked up party skipped town, skipped state, and went into hiding in nearby Idaho all because their elected officials did not want to do anything about climate change and were, therefore, opposed to the cap-and-trade bill that was up for vote.

Having killed the climate crisis bill, the Republican senators said they would return to their jobs on Saturday. “Our mission was to kill cap-and-trade,” said senator Herman Baertschiger “And that’s what we did.”

Source

These young people are thanking the Republicans for screwing up their own futures?  How can this be?

When you have guns, everything is possible, it seems.

Joe Lowndes, a political scientist at the University of Oregon who researches rightwing politics, said: “If the Oregon Republican party were a European political party it would be an authoritarian far-right party. It really has that character, that extraordinary truculence,” he said.
During the standoff over climate crisis, Lowndes said, Republicans “were essentially gloating about having an armed wing of the party. That’s when you cut into the structure of constitutional democracy”.

The fucked up party, not only here in Oregon but throughout the country, has become the most powerful far-right country in power anywhere in the democratic world!

the Republican Party lies far from the Conservative Party in Britain and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany — mainstream right-leaning parties — and closer to far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, whose platform contains plainly xenophobic, anti-Muslim statements.

It is frightening to think that this is now the mainstream party!

The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.
“That’s the tragedy of the American two-party system,” Mr. Greven said. In a multiparty government, white working-class populists might have been shunted into a smaller faction, and the Republicans might have continued as a “big tent” conservative party. Instead, the Republican Party has allowed its more extreme elements to dominate. “Nowhere in Europe do you have that phenomenon,” he said.

Will leave it to David Roberts for the last word:

Basically, this is future-of-the-species stuff, getting decided through a spectacle that's barely even able to break into the daily news cycle. And the next time around, there may not even be the pretense of democracy. We are truly headed into the shit. 

Aging Thursday

I know I have reached a stage in life where kids and college students might only see me as a balding grey older man.  When we don't know a person from the time they were young, then we are perhaps left with nothing but an image of them being their older selves. As if they were born old.

All of us age.

We go grey, bald.
Our skin dries up and wrinkles all over. 
We return the teeth to the cosmos.
The eyes that were once bright and mischievous become dull and lifeless. 
The ears hear not the faint sounds as if there is no more sweet whispers in life.
The fancy colognes of the youth make no difference to the nose that does not pick up any scent, including our own odor.

When we are young and energetic, we do not pause to think that we, too, would one day begin to look like those at the old-age homes.  And, worse, we fail to understand deep within ourselves that after the appointed hour, we will cease to exist even as the wrinkled, toothless, bald, grey, shuffling, smelly versions.

Near my home--yes, the only home I have, which is in Eugene--is a complex that houses quite a few super-senior citizens.  When I see them shuffling along on the bike path, or in their motorized transport, all I see are the old people.  It is not easy to visualize them as crazy kids diving into the river, or as young men and women in love.  We forget that they also went through childhood, adolescence, and youth, and everything else like the rest of us mortals.

When visiting with the folks over the winter break, I helped my parents get rid of a few things and re-organize a few others.  

"You told me not to throw out the photo negatives," my father reminded me.  "So, I retained them.  You decide."

They were mostly garbage.  Every once in a while, a negative seemed promising.  The garbage piled up as I emptied the contents.

And then I saw a couple of negatives.  I, too, was a kid once.

I brought them with me. 

I followed up on M's suggestion.

"I would like to get prints from these negatives, and also get them scanned," I told the older woman at the shop.  She, too, was young once.  But, all I saw now was an older woman.

She held them up against the light.   

"It is me from my younger days, back in India."

She smiled, as if agreeing with me that we were young once, even though we look old now.

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it, 
A rose will bloom; 
it then will fade 
so does a youth; 
so does the fairest maid

A "pappu face" me in 1980!

Only the lonely!

A few weeks ago, a student came to get my advice.  I know what you are thinking; what's wrong with the student to ask me, right?

I never really tell students what they ought to do.  Instead, I often ask them whether they had seriously considered options other than the one for which they want my feedback.  I even tell them that my job is to make sure they have looked at their options from multiple perspectives, so that they can then decide for themselves.

Years ago, one student said that she wished for a Hogwart School kind of a situation.  If you recall, (btw, Harry Potter is now 20 years old!) students are assigned to the houses based on what the magic hat senses.  This student said it will be awesome if such a hat existed that will then tell her what she should do.  "What about free will?" I asked her with a smile.

So, when the student asked me for advice, I engaged with her quite a bit.  And one of the questions that I asked her was about how she spends time outside of classes, and about friends.  "Most people value the time they spent in college for the experiences they had," I told her.  "It is not classes and teachers that people cherish later on.  It is all about experiences with people, especially the healthy experiences."

I am not sure what kind of an impact my words had on that student.  I have done my part.

Students have gazillion "friends" in their social media lives, but, are they meaningfully engaging with their peers in the real  world?  I hope they are; else, it is recipe for loneliness, which is one of the increasing health problems.  Which is why the UK has even appointed a minister for  loneliness!

As this essay puts it:

Loneliness is the leprosy of the 21st century, eating away at its victims and repelling those who encounter it.

Ouch!

It may be that affluence is making things worse. We prize space, privacy and independence, and the richer we get the more of these we can afford, yet their corollary is being alone. Our economy works better if people move around to find work, yet mobility stretches and breaks the bonds of family and community. Phillips told me that “capitalism and a mobile labour market make connections between people very precarious and difficult. In so far as people feel that what they’ve got to do is get on, they are, as it were, encouraged to sacrifice relationship and intimacy.” 
But if money can’t shield you from loneliness, poverty can exacerbate it.

I am with this opinion author who cautions against overblowing the loneliness situation.  And I am also in agreement with the author's concluding lines:

In places like the United States and Britain, it’s the poor, unemployed, displaced and migrant populations that stand to suffer most from loneliness and isolation. Their lives are unstable, and so are their relationships. When they get lonely, they are the least able to get adequate social or medical support.
I don’t believe we have a loneliness epidemic. But millions of people are suffering from social disconnection. Whether or not they have a minister for loneliness, they deserve more attention and help than we’re offering today.

I hope the young, including that student, are making healthy choices.

Good news for a change. Nah, I am kidding!

One of my favorite ideas that I try to convey to students in the introductory class is this: Everything economic that we can think of is a mere 200 year story, which means that we humans are not mentally ready for the kinds of changes that keep coming our way.  We are not biologically wired for such a pace.

I suppose it might be difficult for a 20-year old to really, really appreciate what I tell them.  If I were a 20-year old, I might not even taken classes that I offer ;)

Consider the simple aspect of having children.  Even a hundred years ago, people did not give much thought to having children.  People had kids, was a simple fact.  If they didn't, it was either because they were biologically incapable--and cultures had lots of awful words to ridicule them--or they had opted for a life without sex.  But, life has changed, and changed rapidly.  Now people choose to have no kids, or only one child, or maybe two.  

The pace of such dramatic changes leads us to being completely unprepared as "the largest youth population in human history is coming of age in a steady, unstoppable wave."

societies across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia are experiencing youth booms of staggering proportions: More than half of Egypt’s labor force is younger than age 30. Half of Nigeria’s population of 167 million is between the ages of 15 and 34. In Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, East Timor, Niger, Somalia, and Uganda, more than two-thirds of the population is under the age of 25.
How well these young people transition to adulthood — and how well their governments integrate them economically, politically, and socially — will influence whether their countries thrive or implode. Surging populations of young people will have the power to drive political and social norms, influence what modes of governance will be adopted and the role women will play in society, and embrace or discredit extremist idesituatiologies.

Idle young men, in particular, filled with testosterone, can easily slip into various kinds of anti-social and destructive activities--more so if they do not have war or sex as outlets for the testosterone.  

As we ponder our path forward, we should consider that the developing world’s youth boom coincides with four interrelated global trends: an information revolution, the largest movement of refugees and displaced people in recorded history, growing urbanization that will concentrate youth in cities, and a rise in terrorism and extremist ideologies. Together these trends will spread not just people but, more importantly, their ideas at an unprecedented rate. They will raise and dash expectations pushing and pulling young people toward and away from their hometowns and homelands, toward and away from their desired futures. They will make young people around the globe aware of how others are living, the divisions within their societies, and how those they identify with are treated by governments, security forces, and other groups. This knowledge can inspire or anger. It can commit people to elevating their families and communities — or make them lash out against them.

I tell ya, Major Buzzkill General Malaise is always ready to brighten your day ;)

This situation sets up the probability for more migration:

As poor countries prosper and their young become more educated, they are more likely to migrate. It explains in part why India has the largest diaspora in the world: In 2015, 16 million Indians were living outside India, double the number in 2000.

The youth will be highly motivated to move if employment prospects are dim in their home countries:

"Given the bleak future faced by many, it is little surprise that 40% of 15-29-year-olds in Africa, eastern Europe and Latin America would countenance a permanent move abroad."

I hope the political leaders are paying attention.  Oh, wait, of course they don't pay attention.  Which means, I get yet another opportunity to utter a favorite phrase of mine: we are screwed! ;)

Far from the madding crowd

Even as a kid, I hated crowds.  I was to some extent even terrified of large numbers of people.  I wanted space.  My parents knew this well and sometimes would even give me the out by saying, "Sriram doesn't like crowds."  And that was when I was a kid growing up in India!

Now, after living nearly three decades in the US, and half of that in Oregon, I am even more uneasy when I am in a crowd.  Visiting India is stressful for that reason too.

Of course, the crowds in India--even in the regular daily life, leave alone those Kumbh Melas--are a reflection of the phenomenal population growth in the old country.  In my own lifetime, India has added--I hope you are sitting down for this--about 750 million people.  Imagine that!  I mean, since the time I was born.  Phew; mind blowing!

Intellectually, this is not news to me.  But, there are some facts that mean more than the mere intellectual ideas they quantify.  Here is another way to think about it: When Indira Gandhi and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, introduced their atrocious family planning schemes in the mid-1970s, India's population was only half of what it is today.  How about that!

As I often tell students, such increases in population have come about despite the fact women have fewer children than ever before.  All because we don't easily die!  Somini Sengupta also touched on this during an interview on NPR:

My parents, who were born during the independence era - they're called midnight's children. In their time, life expectancy was 32, and today, it's 66. In their time, infant mortality rates were sky high, and now it's diminished remarkably.

Mortality rates are down. People are living longer. Is it any surprise then that 750 million more have been added since I was born?

There is one huge problem:

Today, India is youngest country in the world with 365 million people between the ages of 10 and 24. A million turn 18 every month.

When the young don't have things to keep them busy, then any society will be in deep trouble.

This is just part of India’s staggering challenge. Every year, the country must create an estimated 12 million to 17 million jobs.

Yep, it is only a part of India's many challenges.

The youth issue is not merely India's problem though.

Worldwide, young workers are in precarious straits. Two out of five are either not working or working in such ill-paid jobs that they can’t escape poverty, according to figures recently released by the International Labour Organization. In the developing world, where few can afford to be unemployed, most young workers have jobs that are sporadic, poorly paid and offer no legal protection; women are worse off.

It could get worse if young men with testosterone peaking in their systems cannot find women.

Little surprise then that the recent caste protests in India took place in Haryana, the state with the sharpest gender imbalance in the nation, with 879 women for every 1,000 men in the population.

I tell ya, I feel so relieved that I am far from the crowds and am safe in the shelter of my ashram.  Om! ;)

Yep, from the New Yorker ;)

I, too, was young once ... not too long ago

Re-posting this from two years ago
**************

"Did you watch the game, Dr. Khé?" asked a student when the class met on Monday.  A warm-up of a different kind before we got into discussing the learning materials. It was, of course, the joshing small-talk time.  So, nothing about what I did during the Super Bowl.

(If students were to read my blog, perhaps they will wonder why I am being so not revealing anything about myself in the classroom when I do that in a lot more public manner here in the blog. If they do, I bet they have also figured out why.)

During the conversation with the two women, when I asked the older woman about her growing up years, they remarked about how they, too, were young once.

That was a profound comment, I thought. As Ken Robinson noted in his hilarious, and thought-provoking, talk, we don't imagine Shakespeare as having been a kid once and giving his parents and teachers quite some grief, especially with his English!  When we see, meet with, people who are "old," we so easily think of of them as nothing but old. A grandma is a grandma is a grandma to us.  But, that grandma, too, was once a young girl, who ran and played and cried like any of us.

Over the winter break, when talking with my mother's aunt, I asked her about her childhood. It was back in the old ancestral village, in a traditional and orthodox Brahmin household. After she "came of age," the norms then precluded her from playing outside with other kids--even girls. She wasn't even allowed to sit on the steps outside and watch others play. It was a house-arrest of sorts!  That is a small piece about her childhood. But, it says a lot, doesn't it? About her life then. That she longed to play with other kids and she could not.

Every once in a while, in the obituary pages of our local newspaper, the photo of the "old" person who died is accompanied by a photo of that same person much earlier in their life. I have no idea what message they wish to convey, but to me the message is always the same: it is not merely the old person who died. That young person they once were also died. The kid that they once were also died. It is, after all, the kid who became a teenager, who grew into an adult, became old, and died.

Young we might be today, but we too will be nothing but old in the future--if we live that long.  Imagine if you were seen by others as nothing but an old man or an old woman, as if your lively and energetic childhood and youth and middle age never existed at all!

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it,

A rose will bloom;
it then will fade
so does a youth;
so does the fairest maid

Nothing new, yes. As Yeats wrote, "That is no country for old men."

Into the swing of things ...a year later

My neighbor who joked that I had a job of milking the cows early in the morning--all because I told him I wake up every day well before six--perhaps will be convinced that I am really out milking cows here in the old country because I have been up every morning between 415 and 430.  For all I know, even the cows are taking it easy at that hour.

Weekday, weekend, vacation, shmacation, it does not matter to me; I wake up early.  Even if it means that soon after coffee I wonder why I had to be up when it is still REM time for most.  But, stupid is as stupid does!

As always, after the fresh coffee and a little bit of reading, I headed to the park for a few laps of brisk walking.  Every round, as I passed the swings, I wondered whether I should take the chance to swing away blissfully.  All these days, I have been avoiding it because of the experience from a summer ago, when I was yelled at--"The swing is for children, and you should not be swinging" a guy scolded me in Tamil.  Once bitten, twice shy, they say.

So, there I was today, yet again passing the swings. And drooling for some good old merriment.  

Finally, I could not take it.

I stepped off the walking path.  I walked up to a swing.  I sat there.  Across from me on another swing was a young boy, perhaps about ten years old.  He smiled at me.  

My feet pressed against the ground.  And with one strong push, I started swinging.  

My feet were now off the ground.  I started gaining speed.  I became the boy that I was back in Neyveli--the only difference is that I did not stand while swinging.

I was lost to the world.  It was heavenly.  If Eliza Doolittle thought she could have danced all night, I know I could have swung all day.

And then came the sounds from behind me.

"Stop.  This is for children only."  

I dragged my feet on the ground in order to slow the swing.  I was crawling to a stop when another man--the local security guy with a mustache that could be a typical National Geographic feature--yelled at me.  "This is for children less than six years old. You will break it" he said in Tamil.  
I got off the swing and started walking away.  There was a sense of public humiliation that I had to wash off.  But, I simply had to swing today.  

As I was walking, the security guy ordered the ten-year old boy also off the swing.  I suppose the guy was not going to relax the rule.  But then, it is not as if there are swings in the park for ten year olds and teenagers and for middle aged folks, or even for the old who might want to gently swing recalling their years.

Tomorrow I will go to the other park ;)

Through the looking glass. A broken looking glass.

One moment you are enjoying life and the blue sky with puffy white clouds. And the next moment, well, shit happens. Sometimes. Like this:

I suppose the cosmos determined that it was time that I paid up, some more.  Can't fight that cosmos.

"You have to pay a $100 deductible."  Not that bad a deal to replace the windshield, I figured.  I was even Polyanna-ish thinking that it could have been worse.

The auto repair folks gave me a ride.  It turned out to be more than a ride.

"How has your day been thus far?" the young fellow asked me.  He didn't look older than twenty-five.

"Looks like I am draining my wallet today. Other than that, things are well. Thanks."

Conversation is not a solo act.  I followed up with "How about you?"

"Am looking at a long day" he said. But, he continued to have a pleasant expression on his face.  Not like me, who was born with a face that apparently cannot even convey a smile!

"Oh yeah?"  That was the cue for him to continue.  And he did.

"After a full day here, I head to work four hours at UPS."

"Wait a sec, are both part-time jobs, or is one full-time and the other part-time?"

Turns out that the UPS job is a part-time one on top of the full-time job.

"That is a long day.  An exhausting day, I imagine."

"Yes, tiring sometimes."

"I teach at Western Oregon.  A few weeks ago a student was describing the tiring job he had at UPS, sorting boxes and loading trucks" I told him.

"Hey, if people are ready to hire you, then I bet you have a very good work ethic."

"I suppose so. I think I have a good work ethic.  That matters a lot" he said.

For a second he seemed to think about his life and experiences.  "It worked out well because I am not the scholarly type" he said.  "I love the trades."

I was yet again reminded that we do a huge disservice to the young by pushing an unhealthy ambiance right from elementary school years that those who don't go to college are losers, and that the trades are only for the ones who can't make it.  This young man is yet another evidence in my pile that there are plenty of people who love what they do, enjoy their lives, understand the world, are wonderfully articulate, and all of that without ever stepping their foot on a college campus.  Life is not about piece of paper that the college diploma is.

The ride ended.  "Thanks for the ride, and the chat."

He put his hand out.  "Thanks. I am ___."

"I am sriram."

"Srilam?"

"Sriram."

"Got it. Sriram."

I wished him well.

I got more than $100 worth out of the shit that the cosmos flung my way.
The score: Cosmos 0 versus sriram who is a gazillion dollars wiser after chatting away with a twenty-five year old young man.  The cosmos lost big time! Again!!!  I am all set for the next round with the cosmos.

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up

Spending time in the old country includes visiting with quite a few older members of the extended family as well.  Some I have interacted with a lot, and minimally with others.

One of them is unwell and bed-ridden, as they say.

Looking at her, a stranger who had never known her, would never be able to imagine her as a charming and lively young woman that she once was.  The evidence is right there--across from her bed is a photograph of her with her husband.  An image that dates way back to when they were married decades ago.

When we don't know a person from the time they were young, then we are perhaps left with nothing but an image of them being their older selves.

All of us age.
We go grey, bald.
Our skin dries up and wrinkles all over.
We return the teeth to the cosmos.
The eyes that were once bright and mischievous become dull and lifeless.
The ears hear not the faint sounds as if there is no more sweet whispers in life.
The fancy colognes of the youth make no difference to the nose that does not pick up any scent, including our own odor.

But, when we are young and energetic, we do not pause to think that we, too, would one day begin to look like those at the old-age homes, and like the bed-ridden extended family relative.  And, worse, we fail to understand deep within ourselves that after the appointed hour, we will cease to exist even as the wrinkled, toothless, bald, grey, shuffling, smelly versions.

Near my home--yes, the only home I have, which is in Eugene--is a complex that houses quite a few super-senior citizens.  When I see them shuffling along on the bike path, or in their motorized transport, all I see are the old people.  It is not easy to visualize them as crazy kids diving into the river, or as young men and women in love.  We forget that they also went through childhood, adolescence, and youth, and everything else like the rest of us mortals.

We are deluded.  We are all Norma Desmonds living our own imaginary Hollywood lives!

When kids lose their privacy ...

I might have rebelled--well, ok, I did rebel--against traditions as I transitioned into the teenage years.  But, I was a good kid.  Didn't get into trouble at all.

If I were a teenager during the iPhone era--as in now--I would have had wonderful outlets for my teen angsts of a gazillion kind.  I can imagine a teenage me tweeting pissed off comments about the principal, the English teacher, about the government.  And would have blogged and tweeted about my leftists feelings. Oh, of course, I would have tweeted about that high school love, too ;)

It is a good thing that I didn't grow up with all those technology gizmos.  Which is why I feel sorry for the teenagers and the youth of today.  So, what is the hassle if they use these, you ask?  Hassles are in plenty, my friend!

A few months ago, I got a Facebook friend request from a name that I could not recognize.  But then Facebook said we had mutual friends.  So, I went to the requester's page and, yes, it was easy to recognize the fellow.  I accepted his request, and sent him a message inquiring about the name change--the first and last names were nothing like his "real" name.

Turns out that the fake name was a recent one, and was strictly in Facebook alone and only for one reason: admissions.  He didn't want a web search for his real name to reveal his antics on Facebook.  It is a growing trend among the young to worry about those issues for a good reason; for instance, among the exclusive private colleges:

Of the 403 undergraduate admissions officers who were polled by telephone over the summer, 35 percent said they had visited an applicant’s social media page — a 9 percentage point increase compared with 2012.

This is atrocious.  What a young person has in words or photos should not be of anybody's concern when it comes to admissions.  Yet, it does.  Which is also why the smart ones are cleaning up the public presence (using the fake name is an easy way, right?)

only 16 percent of them said they had discovered information online that had hurt a student’s application — compared with 35 percent in 2012.
“Students are more aware that any impression they leave on social media is leaving a digital fingerprint,” said Seppy Basili, Kaplan’s vice president for college admissions. “My hunch is that students are not publicly chronicling their lives through social media in the same way.”

Students are now a step, or more, ahead of the admissions folks.  Good for them.

Mr. Dattagupta said he looked favorably upon applicants who posted positive comments about the college and about themselves. But he said he was troubled by applicants who publicly disparaged his college or any other on social media using offensive language.
“That’s a big turnoff for me,” Mr. Dattagupta said. “I wouldn’t want a student like that here.”
The college, however, doesn’t notify students if their social media posts hurt their applications, Mr. Dattagupta said. “We don’t have a mechanism to let a student know they were not accepted because of that particular tweet,” he said.

There is something seriously creepy about Dattagupta's take.  Even creepier it is to think that there are a lot more like Dattagupta than I would ever want.

What is a youth if there cannot be youthful indiscretions and exuberance?

Jaron Lanier talked about how it might get increasingly difficult for the young to erase their past indiscretions.  You can imagine how easy it is going to be to do opposition-research and dig up dirt from when a candidate was a mere sixteen years old.  Especially when you think about something like sexting--when kids sext!

The older I get, the more I worry about the ways in which technology is negatively affecting our lives.  I don't think this is merely the effects of age as I look at the horizon.  There is something seriously creepy when high school kids and college youth have to worry about cleaning up their digital tracks; don't you think so too?

Ah to be young. But, jobless? Ouch!

For years I have been expressing concern about an issue on which I have always hoped that I am dead wrong.  But, I am yet to come across substantive evidence that will convince me that I am worried for no reason at all.

It is about (un)employment, especially among the youth.  

I am returning to the topic only after a few days because, well, I have come across way too many commentaries related to this and none is encouraging.

First, the numbers:

While the overall unemployment rate stayed at 6.7 percent, the unemployment rate for 20-24 year-olds increased from 11.9 percent to in February to 12.2 percent in March. For workers ages 16 to 24, the unemployment rate rose marginally to from 14.4 percent in February 14.5 percent.

That is bad. Very, very bad.

Of course, even two years ago, I blogged about the jobless youth:

The only consolation is, well, at least we are not Greece!

No work.  Not many are hiring.

One of the commentators I often read, Tyler Cowen, lays out the bottom-line early in his opinion piece:

technologically related unemployment — or, even worse, the phenomenon of people falling out of the labor force altogether because of technology — may prove a tougher problem this time around.

Hey, this is exactly what I have been worried about for some time now. This digital, information, revolution is not like the Industrial Revolution that unleashed plenty of new jobs that never existed before in order to manufacture products that never existed before.  This time it is different. Mighty different.

Cowen adds:

A new paper by Alan B. Krueger, Judd Cramer and David Cho of Princeton has documented that the nation now appears to have a permanent class of long-term unemployed, who probably can’t be helped much by monetary and fiscal policy. It’s not right to describe these people as “thrown out of work by machines,” because the causes involve complex interactions of technology, education and market demand. Still, many people are finding this new world of work harder to navigate.
Sometimes, the problem in labor markets takes the form of underemployment rather than outright joblessness. Many people, especially the young, end up with part-time and temporary service jobs — or perhaps a combination of them.

It is an employment world that is unlike, well, as Cowen puts it: 

what we’re facing isn’t your grandfather’s unemployment problem. It does have something to do with modern technology, and it will be with us for some time.

The technological revolution underway, along with the rapid globalization, will make it harder and harder to generate meaningful jobs that pay the middle class wages we have come to expect in America. 

I worry that the youth are not being told all these.  Instead, they are presented with nothing but rosy scenarios.  Follow your passion, they are advised.  A wonderful advice, yes, but only if the youth are also warned that the route they choose might lead them to an economic dead-end.

When I engage students about the possible economic misfortunes that lie ahead, they readily dismiss my concerns because, after all, they do not hear anything like my warning sirens from others.  Maybe I should start talking with them about the pots of gold where the rainbows end, about unicorns, and, perhaps, about Santa Claus too!

Eat More
by Joe Corrie

’Eat more fruit!’ the slogans say,
’ More fish, more beef, more bread!’
But I’m on Unemployment pay
My third year now, and wed.

And so I wonder when I’ll see
The slogan when I pass,
The only one that would suit me, -
’ Eat More Bloody Grass!’

We were young, once!

"Did you watch the game, Dr. Khé?" asked a student when the class met on Monday.  A warm-up of a different kind before we got into discussing the learning materials. It was, of course, the joshing small-talk time.  So, nothing about what I did during the Super Bowl.

(If students were to read my blog, perhaps they will wonder why I am being so not revealing anything about myself in the classroom when I do that in a lot more public manner here in the blog. If they do, I bet they have also figured out why.)

During the conversation with the two women, when I asked the older woman about her growing up years, they remarked about how they, too, were young once.

That was a profound comment, I thought. As Ken Robinson noted in his hilarious, and thought-provoking, talk, we don't imagine Shakespeare as having been a kid once and giving his parents and teachers quite some grief, especially with his English!  When we see, meet with, people who are "old," we so easily think of of them as nothing but old. A grandma is a grandma is a grandma to us.  But, that grandma, too, was once a young girl, who ran and played and cried like any of us.

Over the winter break, when talking with my mother's aunt, I asked her about her childhood. It was back in the old ancestral village, in a traditional and orthodox Brahmin household. After she "came of age," the norms then precluded her from playing outside with other kids--even girls. She wasn't even allowed to sit on the steps outside and watch others play. It was a house-arrest of sorts!  That is a small piece about her childhood. But, it says a lot, doesn't it? About her life then. That she longed to play with other kids and she could not.

Every once in a while, in the obituary pages of our local newspaper, the photo of the "old" person who died is accompanied by a photo of that same person much earlier in their life. I have no idea what message they wish to convey, but to me the message is always the same: it is not merely the old person who died. That young person they once were also died. The kid that they once were also died. It is, after all, the kid who became a teenager, who grew into an adult, became old, and died.

Young we might be today, but we too will be nothing but old in the future--if we live that long.  Imagine if you were seen by others as nothing but an old man or an old woman, as if your lively and energetic childhood and youth and middle age never existed at all!

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it,

A rose will bloom;
it then will fade
so does a youth;
so does the fairest maid

Nothing new, yes. As Yeats wrote, "That is no country for old men."

Fight against the Indian way of doing things ... and the only result will be tears

I know exactly when I first realized that I had stopped fighting my battles against India and its Indian-ness. That enlightenment about the change within me came when I was in a cave with the Enlightened One--the Buddha.  Well, sort of.

It was at Ellora, where it was one cave after another of astounding art.  And this was after my previous day at Ajanta.  Paintings and sculptures that were hundreds of years old.  I was so moved by them all.  I was ecstatic to the point of getting emotional.  It was a secular pilgrimage that taught me a lot, especially about the utter insignificance of my singular and momentary existence.

It was mostly a foreign crowd, at Ajanta and at Ellora.  Irrespective of whether we tourists looked Japanese or American or European or, yes, Indian, we walked in and out of the caves with utmost respect and, if talking with others, conversing at low decibels.

Ellora, perhaps because it was less remote than Ajanta, had a few more locals among the tourists. Unlike the mostly foreign tourists at Ajanata who were travelling without kids, Ellora had a few Indian families with kids in tow.  At one of the caves, two middle-aged men, who I imagined as the father and uncle of the kids, not only chose not to teach the kids the proper way to behave at such sites, they even delighted in showing the kids how the sounds echoed in that confined setting.

A young Indian woman, with a camera hanging from one shoulder, a backpack, and a sketchbook in her hand was visibly annoyed.  I smiled at her as I kept walking.

I ran into the same group again at another cave.  The men were boisterous and the kids screamed their lungs out.  The young woman could not bear it anymore and she told them something in Hindi, which seemed like she was expressing her displeasure.  The American I am anymore, I kept going.

Later, at another cave, with mostly unfinished carvings, I saw that young woman in a group with three others.

They seemed like they had come together, perhaps less as tourists as more as scholars.  As I neared them, I told the rest that their friend got pissed off at the noisemakers.  She smiled.

I realized that I had changed.

I was her, and more, when younger.

Even a few years ago, I might have expressed emotions similar to what that young woman felt.  But, not anymore.

There is simply no point fighting with India.  It is as pointless as yelling at a mountain. A tiring thing to do, and nothing ever comes out of it.

Now, when I discuss India, or when I visit India, I simply accept India and her people for the way things are. I do not even attempt to understand the land and its peoples anymore.  They fascinate me, but I have come to realize that trying to understand is frustration, aggravation, anger, disappointment, and many more emotions along those lines.  Simply accepting, on the other hand, means that the land and its peoples are fascinating, beautiful, magical, and more such emotions.

Pico Iyer summarizes all those for me when he writes:

India is not going to change at its core anytime soon, and the challenge for all of us who love it is to see the blessing in that and not the aggravation.

As I often note here and at conversations and in the classroom, India has a momentum of its own and all the external agents who have tried to change its direction not only failed but, ironically, only become Indianized themselves.  As Iyer comments:

Every visitor who goes to India—and I’ve been back twice in the past seven months—knows how the country refuses to conform to plans or international expectations; the only way to survive is to give yourself over to its way of being. Fight against the Indian way of doing things, wish that things were different, and the only result will be tears. Just as you have to turn your watch forwards by half an hour when landing in India, just as you have to check in the batteries from your camera as separate pieces of luggage, just as it can prove impossible to find a working Internet connection in a proud center of high-tech like Hyderabad, so every foreigner has to surrender and realize that things will get done in their own, unexpected ways. The very qualities that make India so culturally alive, textured and itself make it uncommonly reluctant to adjust to the economic rules and geopolitical norms of the world. India most happily changes the lives of those who have no thought of changing India. 

 I wish I could share all these with that young woman.  But, even if I did, for all I know, she will refuse to accept such an interpretation, as much as I refused to give up the good fight when I was once young.  That is the charm of youth anywhere, especially in a beautiful and old India.

At Chennai's Marina Beach

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses: Youth unemployment!

The contractual work year in the academic world in which I live begins in ten days.  As I put together the syllabi for the courses that I am scheduled to teach, I, yet again, struggle with how to make the subject appeal to the students who, for the most part, treat any of the courses as merely a hurdle to get past on the way to the "real world" in which they will attempt to realize that fabled American Dream.

I am tempted to contact a few students from the past years and inquire about their economic status, and whether their faith in the college degree as the passport to economic success has worked out.  But, I am afraid the responses will be along the lines of unemployment and underemployment, with very few excitedly reporting about their jobs.  There is a good chance that some of them tried to escape the bleak employment scenario by going to graduate school, which I would have warned them not to if I had any say at all.

It is one tough world out there for the young and the restless.

Consider the bleak prospects of young people entering the workforce today: the portion of people aged twenty to twenty-four who have jobs has fallen from 72.2 percent in 2000 to just 61.5 percent. Meanwhile, if we adjust for inflation, the median earnings of men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four working full-time has fallen by nearly 30 percent since 1973. For women, the median has fallen by 17 percent. As Andy Sum, an economist at Northeastern University who has studied youth unemployment for many years, has shown, if you are out of work or underemployed during those initial years of adulthood, chances are far higher you will be unemployed, poor, or dependent on welfare later on.

  If that is the American story, how are the youth in the rest of the world?

At least we are not Spain will not be a consolation to that eager-beaver 22-year old feeling discouraged about the job market.  It could get worse for them in the long haul:

people who begin their careers without work are likely to have lower wages and greater odds of future joblessness than those who don’t. A wage penalty of up to 20%, lasting for around 20 years, is common. The scarring seems to worsen fast with the length of joblessness and is handed down to the next generation, too.
The overall ageing of the population might blunt this effect by increasing demand for labour. But Japan’s youth joblessness, which surged after its financial crisis in the early 1990s, has stayed high despite a fast fall in the overall workforce. A large class of hikikomori live with their parents, rarely leaving home and withdrawn from the workforce.

So, at least we are not Japan. Yet.

There is something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.

Thus, I will try, in some twisted Groundhog Day ways, to attempt to convey to students that higher education and college degree were never meant to be any kind of a professional guild and that the whole system is not necessarily geared towards maximizing the students' welfare.

I will warn them not to listen to faculty, in particular.  I will then follow it up with how the advice from a faculty not to listen to faculty is a neat paradox.  If they listened to that advice, then they will not listen to anything I say the rest of the term.  On the other hand, if they did not pay attention to that advice, then they have lost out on that observation.

The good thing is that most will not be interested even in that humorous take because higher education has done a fantastic job of making sure that the mission is not about critical thinking anymore.

No, I am not being cranky!

Some seek eternal youth. I am eternally old?

It was time to get myself to the barbershop. Balding, it turns out, also means that hair growth is remarkably uneven.  Strange how all these aspects of aging are not what I imagined even ten years ago, leave alone my imaginations when I was a kid!

"How do you want your haircut?"

The question coming from him was rather funny because, you see, he was way ahead of me in the balding process.  I bet he has to spend very little on hair care, even less than the tiny amount I have to shell out.

As he started working on my hair, it was, of course, time for small talk.

"Do you work, or are you retired?" he asked.

This is increasingly the story of my life.

At a recent neighborhood party, I introduced myself to the daughter of the neighbors who were the hosts, and she, too, asked me whether I was retired or working.

A while ago, a store clerk apologized for not having given me my senior-citizen discount.

I am no George Clooney, but, really?  Come on, really?  Do I look that old enough to look like I am of retirement age?

The practically all-grey hair on my head and my face leads people to wonder whether I am old enough to be retired.

But, I am not even fifty yet!

I suppose with people coloring their hair--even men--it is mostly only the old and retired, who have nothing to lose or gain, who walk around grey?

On top of the appearance, perhaps I come across as an old fuddy-duddy too.  At least I I don't drool and nod off mid-sentence. Not yet!

No wonder a cousin told me, not too long ago, "live a little, Sriram."

Or, like the other time a few years ago when a much older colleague, who is now well into her retirement, told me that she didn't think I was that young because I was so wise!  I didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult!

"Hey, don't be misled by my grey hair" I told the barber with a chuckle.  "I got my first grey hair when I was 13 or 14."

Other teenagers got pimples and acne as their "welcome to the teens" gift from nature.  I got them, especially right on my nose, and grey hair too.  I was actually quite proud of my grey hair.  After all, how many teenagers get them, right?

"My mother was grey when I was young. So was my grandmother. An uncle. It is genetic" I added.

Driving back home, I wondered why I never felt the urge in all these years to dye my hair, and maintain a clean-shaven face, and present myself as a much younger Sriram. I guess, as Popeye always said, "I am what I am."

Deal with it, world--it is your problem, not mine ;)

Unemployment and the moral(e) issue

As it gets closer to the time that I will have to start grading, a different kind of a reflex reaction kicks in--I seek compensation in terms of reading and blogging, perhaps to replenish the dead grey cells.

Plus, there are incredibly serious problems all around--way more than the "poor me" problems.  Isn't that right, friend? ;)

Consider, for instance, this scary, scary chart:

I am flummoxed trying to imagine a 50% unemployment.  And more!  What the what?

We are not talking about some uneducated, illiterate youth simply idling away.  It is an educated population that is jobless.  I have lucked out in life--no firsthand experience of unemployment.  Even the teetotaler me would have picked up the bottle if I had been a young man looking at a decimated job market.

All I have to do is look at the graduating students in order to get a sense of how the dim prospects of jobs begins to affect their morale.  Robert Shiller writes about this morale dimension of high unemployment rates:

The high unemployment that we have today in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere is a tragedy, not just because of the aggregate output loss that it entails, but also because of the personal and emotional cost to the unemployed of not being a part of working society.

I recall that in the movie, Up in the Air, the number one issue that the unemployed workers said they faced was this: waking up in the morning and wondering what they were going to do that day.  Being jobless, when it is not by design or choice, is one morale crusher, I would imagine.

Unemployment is a product of capitalism: People who are no longer needed are simply made redundant. On the traditional family farm, there was no unemployment.

Indeed.  But then, of course, we do not want to return to all of us working on our respective forty acres either.  So, ... ?

For morale, we need a social compact that finds a purpose for everyone, a way to show oneself to be part of society by being a worker of some sort.
And for that we need fiscal stimulus—ideally, the debt-friendly stimulus that raises taxes and expenditures equally. The increased tax burden for all who are employed is analogous to the reduced hours in work-sharing.
But, if tax increases are not politically expedient, policymakers should proceed with old-fashioned deficit spending. The important thing is to achieve any fiscal stimulus that boosts job creation and puts the unemployed back to work.

Hmmm ... that's where we will get stuck in an endless debate, won't we?

Here in the US, though the unemployment rate is in the single-digit now, unlike the horror stories in the Euro countries, but the aggregate number doesn't tell the whole story of discouraged and underemployed workers.  One thing I am convinced about: there is no way we can escape from re-writing the social contract that ties together the government, taxpayers, businesses, and consumers.  Finally, even Germany is waking up to this reality.  Let's see what they come up with.

I don't care how the contract is re-written because, like with anything else, not everybody will be happy with a new contract anyway.  But, what pisses me off is how atrociously Congress has been ignoring all these issues.  It is pathetic.

It is the Congress members who ought to be forced into unemployment, not the young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed educated youth.

(From the old country ...)

The tyranny of the old and the rested

Douglas MacArthur famously said that old soldiers never die.  Now, it seems like old politicians and professors don't either.  They hang around forever and ever, and even make a return just as we ease into thinking that they are gone!

The US Senate looks like it is some kind of a geriatric ward, where the older folks keep mumbling to themselves.  Representatives? Not!

Congress is decidedly older than the populace it represents: Although Americans may serve in the House beginning at age 25, only 10 percent of House members have been under the age of 40 in recent years. By comparison, 22 percent of the general population and 30 percent of registered voters are between 25 and 39 years old. The average American is more than 20 years younger than the person who represents him or her in the House. 

Watching India's political scene, one might erroneously conclude that very few kids are ever born in that country.  The following chart from the Economist points to the wide gap between the median age of the population and the average age of the governing cabinet:

With the prime minister at 80 and the president at 76, and with such a senior-citizen cabinet, no wonder they can't relate to most pressing public issues of the day!

Are we growing up faster and faster? What is a youth?

As a kid growing up in rather insular industrial town, I was always impressed with my cousins and their friends whenever we went to Madras--even those who were younger than me seemed to be a lot more informed about the ways of the world than I was.  A completely different story, though, when we went to our grandmothers' places--even those a couple of years older than me seemed to be blissfully unaware of the world with which I was familiar.

As I got older, I felt that I was forever trying to catch up with those from the cities.  That same contrast of small and big town experiences carried over when I came to the US.  There I was as a graduate student and even high school students were immensely worldly wiser than me.

It was so tempting to conclude that kids were not being kids and were growing up too fast.  That in so many different ways they were losing their innocence before they could understand the ramifications of their actions.  The first, and only, cigarette that I ever smoked was when I was eighteen, and news reports were that quite a few kids here typically test out a smoke in their middle school years.  Alcohol, sex, porn, whatever ... everything apparently happened way early.

A few months ago, there was this report about girl kids:

[Most] researchers seem to agree on one thing: Breast budding in girls is starting earlier. The debate has shifted to what this means. Puberty, in girls, involves three events: the growth of breasts, the growth of pubic hair and a first period. Typically the changes unfold in that order, and the proc­ess takes about two years. But the data show a confounding pattern. While studies have shown that the average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, the average age of first period, or menarche, has remained fairly constant, dropping to only 12.5 from 12.8 years. Why would puberty be starting earlier yet ending more or less at the same time? 

It will be one heck of a tough time being a parent under such drastically changing conditions.  Even more complicating is this:

Adding to the anxiety is the fact that we know so little about how early puberty works. A few researchers, including Robert Lustig, of Benioff Children’s Hospital, are beginning to wonder if many of those girls with early breast growth are in puberty at all. Lustig is a man prone to big, inflammatory ideas. (He believes that sugar is a poison, as he has argued in this magazine.) To make the case that some girls with early breast growth may not be in puberty, he starts with basic science. True puberty starts in the brain, he explains, with the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH. “There is no puberty without GnRH,” Lustig told me. GnRH is like the ball that rolls down the ramp that knocks over the book that flips the stereo switch. Specifically, GnRH trips the pituitary, which signals the ovaries. The ovaries then produce estrogen, and the estrogen causes the breasts to grow. But as Lustig points out, the estrogen that is causing that growth in young girls may have a different origin. It may come from the girls’ fat tissue (postmenopausal women produce estrogen in their fat tissue) or from an environmental source. “And if that estrogen didn’t start with GnRH, it’s not puberty, end of story,” Lustig says. “Breast development doesn’t automatically mean early puberty. It might, but it doesn’t have to.” Don’t even get him started on the relationship between pubic-hair growth and puberty. “Any paper linking pubic hair with early puberty is garbage. Gar-bage. Pubic hair just means androgens, or male hormones. The first sign of puberty in girls is estrogen. Androgen is not even on the menu.” 

All I can think is that I am incredibly thankful for not having any six year old at this time!

I suppose because of the biological aspects on multiple levels, the changes in girls are more dramatic than in boys.  But, boys, too, are apparently reaching puberty earlier than before!

Examining clinicians found that between their ninth and 10^th birthdays, 4.3 percent of white boys, 21 percent of black boys and 3.3 percent of Mexican-American boys showed pubic hair development, she said. Like genital growth, pubic hair development results from the natural, genetically programmed boost in production of male hormones, but environmental factors may play a role.
The analysis suggests U.S. boys overall may be beginning puberty up to a half year earlier than previous research indicated, Herman-Giddens said. The estimate is based on the onset of pubic hair growth, assessment of which is less subjective than that of testicular growth. The difference could be greater if the genital findings are accurate.

Here is the bizarre contrast though: After all that rush to grow up, there is now an emergent adulthood.  That is, while childhood quickly gives away to adolescence, it is one heck of a lengthy adolescence prior to real adulthood.  So, if adulthood is getting delayed, then why the rush out of childhood, right?

In the past, to become a good gatherer or hunter, cook or caregiver, you would actually practice gathering, hunting, cooking and taking care of children all through middle childhood and early adolescence—tuning up just the prefrontal wiring you'd need as an adult. But you'd do all that under expert adult supervision and in the protected world of childhood, where the impact of your inevitable failures would be blunted. When the motivational juice of puberty arrived, you'd be ready to go after the real rewards, in the world outside, with new intensity and exuberance, but you'd also have the skill and control to do it effectively and reasonably safely.
In contemporary life, the relationship between these two systems has changed dramatically. Puberty arrives earlier, and the motivational system kicks in earlier too.
At the same time, contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.
The experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world is increasingly delayed, and the growth of the control system depends on just those experiences. The pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at the University of California, Berkeley, has a good metaphor for the result: Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.

 Again, I am relived and happy not to have a teenager in the house!  Will be way stressful to find out that the ten year old has been watching porn, and lots of it!

At the end, one thing strikes me: this is not the kind of a post I had planned on writing when I began.  It was going to be a reflective, autoethnographic post on the growing up aspects of life.  But then, the post (re)wrote itself :)

The economy hits youth worst as they lose the generational war

The Wall Street Journal provides an interesting commentary on how the persistently high unemployment and underemployment among the youth compares with the stagflation the baby-boomers experienced.  In 1982, unemployment rate for the youth was a high 17%.  But,

the situation quickly improved. By the end of 1983, the unemployment rate for 18-24 year-olds had dropped below 14%, and it didn’t get back above that mark until the latest recession. This time around, joblessness among young people remains over 15% three years after the recovery began. ...
Many of today’s 20-somethings, therefore, are stuck on the sidelines for what should be — and what was for their parents — their most important years for wage growth and career development. The effects are likely to be long-lasting. A study by Yale economist Lisa Kahn found that “the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent.”

From my reading of the situation, it is not getting better, and does not seem like it will get better any time soon.  It is awful!

On top of everything else, most of these youth are also graduating with debts from their years at colleges and universities, which then seems more and more the case that we are looking at a horrible prospect of, what Matt Yglesias referred to as, the indentured servant generation :(

Yet, we refuse to talk about one of the significant ways in which the youth are losing because the game is rigged against them: the enormous diversion of precious resources to the much older generations.

Social Security and Medicare were created in a very different America as a response to very different circumstances. The old-age entitlements were designed to alleviate problems related to an economy still in transition from rural agriculture to urban manufacturing and post-industrial services. Private pensions and retirement savings were relative rarities, and the communitarian dream of multiple generations living under the same roof—invoked as an ideal by some of the very people, such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, who champion old-age entitlements as a means of “independence” for seniors—was a routine necessity.
That’s no longer the case in a country where most retirees are wealthier than the younger people paying for their benefits. According to 2010 data (the latest available) from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Consumer Expenditure Data, the typical American 65 or older had a pretax income of about $41,000 and annual expenses of about $37,000, including $4,800 for all medical care costs they bear under the current regime (insurance, prescription drugs, doctor’s visits, etc.). Those who can pay for their needs out of their own pockets should do so

Perhaps only James Bond can help; can he?