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- My Grandmother vs Researchers!
Today’s post is dedicated to my grandmother - Mrs. Rangamani Ammal. From my very first memory, she showered me with love - with every interaction! She passed away a long time ago - but, I’ve seen people vividly recall her words 25+ years after they were uttered and talk about how it influenced their life in a profound way.
Given that both my parents were at work, she was the one who practically raised me at home. Anyone who saw us together could tell how good she was with kids - she had raised many kids at this point in her life.
I must’ve been a piece of cake for her… Having lost her husband (my grandfather) at a very young age, she raised both her son (my dad) and daughter (my aunt) as a single mom. She held multiple jobs to put food on the table and made sure to give them good school education.
My parents already had two kids - my elder brother (7 years) and elder sister (10 years) before I was conceived. As it turns out, it was my grand mom’s constant requests/pleads that eventually convinced my mom to consider having another child - my mom confessed, years later.
Apparently, she told my mom an old saying in Tamil: “தம்பி உடையான் படைக்கு அஞ்சான்”. It loosely translates to, “Person who has a younger brother will not dread any army”. (You see that type of behavior in old Indian mythological tales… For example: In Ramayana, Lord Rama relies and trusts his younger brother Lakshmana tremendously which enables him to go on risky missions & battles in the story.)
Everything I know about resilience and determination comes from her journey. Life presented countless obstacles, yet she remained steadfast, always moving forward with unyielding resolve.
With that context, let me recollect and explain some of her actions and words of wisdom (in Tamil) and connect them to multidisciplinary insights that I’ve learned today as a 45 year old man.
Table of Contents
If we are talking about the wisdom from the elders, old ideas, old books, etc. then we have to first talk about the Lindy Effect.
The Lindy Effect
The Lindy Effect is a heuristic that suggests the longer a non-perishable item has existed, the longer its expected future life expectancy. In other words, the more time something has survived, the more likely it is to survive in the future. Here longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence or competition and greater odds of continued existence into the future.
For example, classic works of literature and philosophy that have endured for hundreds of years are prime examples of Lindy. Tamil literature is also 2000+ years old. Their continued relevance suggests a deep-rooted value.
Certain customs or traditions that have persisted through generations might also be seen as Lindy. They've proven their resilience to societal changes.
The Lindy Effect gets its name from Lindy's Delicatessen in New York City. This is where a group of comedians, including Albert Goldman, would often gather after their shows. During these conversations, they observed a pattern in their careers: the longer a comedian had been successful, the more likely they were to continue being successful. Goldman coined the term "Lindy's Law" to describe this phenomenon, which later evolved into the more general Lindy Effect.
Nassim Taleb is one of the primary figures who popularized and expanded the concept of the Lindy Effect - let me start with his thoughts about grandmother’s wisdom…
The Grandmother vs. The Researchers
If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works 90 per cent of the time. On the other hand, in part because of scientism and academic prostitution, in part because the world is hard, if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are that it works at less than 10 percent, unless it is has also been covered by the grandmother and the classics, in which case why would you need a psychologist?
Let’s dive in…
The Psychology of Lakshmi and Saraswati
One thing I remember well is how well my grandma role-modeled the habit of reading for me. She was the first to introduce me to the habit of reading books. She used to read whenever she got some free time in her busy schedule. She’d borrow books from the local library and not only read it for herself but also tell me stories from it. I got hooked to her stories as a kid.
After I learned how to read and write Tamil in elementary school, one fine day she stopped telling me a very interesting story midway and asked me to finish it by reading the book instead. The suspense and pace of the story made me to go read the remainder of the book overnight. After this, I got hooked to books - it started with Tamil fiction and slowly moved to non-fiction books over the years.
There was a yearly ritual (Pooja) for Goddess Saraswathi (Goddess of Knowledge) at our home - we never missed it. But, I don’t recall we doing any special rituals for the Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi.
I also remember an explicit piece of advice from her:
“Lakshmi may come to you even without the blessing of Saraswati. But, she won’t stay for long with you if you don’t get the continuous blessings of Saraswati.”
This saying reinforces the idea of continuous learning throughout our life. We live in a ever-changing dynamic world. In such an unpredictable environment, we have to continuously learn and unlearn. We have to continuously get better at map making.
In practice, it turns out to be a very difficult thing to achieve - for two main reasons:
Once you start getting the blessings of Lakshmi, she will make you crave more and more for her blessings - you can’t stop accumulating wealth.
But, once you receive just an ounce of the blessing of Saraswati, it feels like more than a lifetime’s worth.
It is not just about praying to those Goddesses individually. But, we have to understand how each of those Goddesses influence our emotions and interact among themselves. Don’t just focus on the parts - but also observe their interactions over time!
I’ll end this topic with a pertinent quote from Schopenhauer:
“Wealth, in the strict sense of the word, that is, great superfluity, can do little for our happiness; and many rich people feel unhappy just because they are without any true mental culture or knowledge, and consequently have no objective interests which would qualify them for intellectual occupations. For beyond the satisfaction of some real and natural necessities, all that the possession of wealth can achieve has a very small influence upon our happiness, in the proper sense of the word; indeed, wealth rather disturbs it, because the preservation of property entails a great many unavoidable anxieties. And still men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has. So you may see many a man, as industrious as an ant, ceaselessly occupied from morning to night in the endeavor to increase his heap of gold.”
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