He died all alone.  Alone in his bed, alone in the house, he just passed away.  Over the ten odd years prior, my father and I had become increasingly distant.   While he was never very social or much of a family man, our relationship was okay for many years.  But he was becoming increasingly bitter, having a tough time dealing with his physical deterioration and his mortality. I found him increasingly difficult to talk to – and honestly, I did not try much to find a way to communicate. We just drifted apart with only short meetings while I was in India.

I always respected him for his incredible intelligence – even till his last couple of years, his mental acuity barely diminished. He was very resilient and never cried about the bad hand he was dealt. I later found out that when he returned to the US when he was almost 50, with no job and little money, he loaded fish and meat early in the mornings in the meatpacking district in New York just to earn enough to keep him going.

But I never really tried to understand him, never took the effort to truly sit and talk to him, and thus remained somewhat critical of him overall as someone who just could not make the right choices.

This was my loss.

After he died, I thought of him.  Looked at old pictures.  Looked at all his old perfectly preserved documents.  Talked to the storekeeper in the gully where he lived when he was young and for the first time wrote down his family tree, whatever was possible.

I slowly started to understand him better, something I could have done when he was alive by talking to him – but didn’t.  My irrecoverable loss that I will always regret.

His father was fairly old when he was born, in his second marriage to his mother.  When he was still a child, his father died.  His only father-like figure was his step brother, many years older than him.  His mother was not very literate and was left to bring him up along with the two other children of her husband.  She had little time for him and so he did not experience much maternal, and definitely no paternal, affection or love.  He was also very different from the peers in his community. It was the early 40’s in pre-independence India.  He was the only person in all of his family that was interested in studying and desirous of a college education. No one else around him understood this, they all were small local shopkeepers in the paper and cloth markets.  He did it all on his own, ending up at the most prestigious college in Delhi- from where he went on to get a Masters in Physics. I doubt there was one person around him that he could talk to about this – he did it all himself.  From here, once again all on his own, he ended up going to University of Chicago for his PhD, almost unheard of back then for a person from India. He specialized in materials science and using exotic materials to develop all sorts of sensors.

His nickname when he was a kid was “Anna” – I don’t know why.   I sat at the small brass shop at the corner of the alley way in Chandni Chowk where he grew up.  When the shopkeeper learned I was “Anna’s” son, he told me how in 1959 when my father came back from the US with his PhD, it was like a celebrity coming home – the entire “mohalla” showed up.  The shopkeeper was a teenager then and remembered how a large sheet was hung in the middle of the street and my father showed his home videos of America to everyone.

When I visited India, I would often find him still reading old science text books on chemistry and materials. He even came up with some new theories on how cooking in certain ways created complex molecules that were responsible for many ailments.   I don’t know if this is true, but he was always thinking and analyzing. Science and materials was his passion and is what defined him.

 He was always drawn to a more simple life, saying how he would like to open a store in Chandni Chowk selling grains or paper or cloth – probably reminiscent of his early childhood sitting in his father’s store. But scientific intellect was his gift and not achieving the success of his full potential haunted him.

They say many of us have a higher love in our lives.  Some find it in faith and God, some in family.  When I finally opened his old briefcase, there were no pictures or memorabilia of family, no articles of religion – just all his degrees and academic achievements kept neatly and safely.  There was also a small box – with small samples of rare metals and materials.  His higher love.

In philosophy it is common to discuss the meaning of life or the purpose of life – but little discussion exists on the value of a life. Note that I am referring not to value of human life as a whole, but the value of an individual life – the value of my life right now.

Biological value

Is there value to my life as a living creature, the value of the biological organism of me as a human being?  The Abrahamic religions, in particular Christianity, do not particularly debate this by saying that we are all created by God in it’s image and that we are all God’s children – thus since God has value by definition, each of our lives as biological creatures have value.  This neatly resolves the issue of how to deal with other animals, despite many being not too dissimilar from a physical and emotional point of view, and in some cases arguably superior, to the biology of human beings.  This religious view then easily provided justification for us to consume other animals for food or materials or just for sport.

However, there is another perspective to accommodate atheists or those that believe in evolution and not divine creationism. In this argument, the human creature is so amazing, so sophisticated, so advanced that just by virtue of its complexity and abilities, it certainly has to have value as a biological entity, although this view does not separate the biological value from the value due to capabilities.

On a pure biological basis, we can be looked at as simply a collection of atoms combined with chemical and electrical processes that work in a synchronized way to form an amazingly complex machine.  And just like any complex machine, compromise of any one central component can render the entire machine useless.  Similarly, one little issue like a bad heart, collapsed lung even a small aneurysm an make the human machine not viable anymore.  Take this one step further – if there a human being that required some machine to keep it running, does that mass of atoms have value as a biological thing?

So, if you take away all my mental capabilities, all emotions and desires, all intelligence and experiences, then what is left – a machine made of flesh that consumes input, i.e. food, and creates energy and excretes the rest as waste. In fact, it is a machine with a pretty low efficiency ratio.

At this point, I see little value of me purely as a biological creature.

A small side note about euthanasia.  Furthering the above thought, I do believe voluntary euthanasia should be legalized. If a person is at that point in their life, where there is little more than just a badly functioning biological machine left, then there should be no reason to preserve it.  As well as it should be a person’s right to choose when the cost of continuing to live is too much and thus allow for medical assisted death.

Experiences and value

In his lectures on death, Shelly Kagan described a container theory of a human being, likening  the physical body to just an empty container, that is available to fill up.  We fill up our container body with experiences, which is what gives value.   The beauty of our life, and thus its value, comes the collection of amazing experiences, from the little mundane ones like taking a flight for the first time to the major ones like watching your child being born or achieving some difficult feat. Just like a glass is just a glass, but when filled with liquor, it gains value.  The human container has the capacity for almost seemingly infinite experiences limited only by our time in existence.

With a richness of experiences, gives one a sense of wisdom to share and impart.  Experiences and the variety of experiences gives value to us. Experiencing the natural world gives us a true appreciation of other creatures, experiences with other humans gives us empathy, and so on.

But if the amount of experiences we collect defines our value, this leaves us with the difficult problem of ascribing little value to very young children as they have not had the chance to gain experiences and ascribe very high value to older people, assuming they have accumulated a lot of experiences.   Note that it is possible that one just bides their time in existence in very limited and isolated conditions – thus amount of experience is not directly and linearly correlated with age.

This is where the potentiality of experiences comes in – the value of life depends on the potential to have experiences.  A child has a tremendous ability to gain experience given their whole life ahead of them.   One may not eventually gain all the experiences they had the potential for, but the potential did exist.

Meaning and purpose of life

Philosophers throughout the ages have tried to figure out the meaning of life which is often conflated, interchanged or confused with the purpose of life.  We come into this life with nothing and when we die, we leave with nothing.  In between is our existence, our physical life on earth.  During our existence we do things, collect things, earn money, interact with others, reproduce and most importantly, have experiences.   I look at the purpose of life closer to the things we do in life.  Usually, we have different purposes for some periods of time throughout our life – a student’s main purpose is to study and get an education, a young mother’s purpose centers around taking care of her children.  The purpose of life at any given time is necessary to live, but may or may not give meaning to life. A person can wake up each day, go to their labor, work all day, come home and then do it again the next day, over and over again. They have a purpose, to work and put food on their table, but this may not result in a meaningful life.  There are many things that add meaning to life, and I have written about this in a separate essay, “Exploring the T’s of life” However, I resist including the meaning of life explicitly in the value of my life as many of the activities that create meaning are part of experiences, impact and other facets of the value equation.

Economic value

A very controversial topic is whether a human being has a monetary value that can be ascribed to it.  To an economy, each individual has some value that they can or do contribute to the economy.  Similarly, an individual has earnings potential and thus has economic value to those around them.  In fact the US government actually says each US citizen has an economic value of about $5m.  I am sure In a country like India or China, where human capital is more than plentiful, thus number would be a lot lot less.  Thinking about monetary value can have some depressing results.  At my age, my earning potential and thus contribution to the economy or even to my family, is somewhat limited.  However, if I died today, my life insurance will probably be higher than that, implying I am worth more dead rather than alive!

The value of Impact

Another way I think about the value of my life is by asking “will anything change if I am not alive?” People die, loved ones are sad and say nice things at their funeral – but life is for the living and sure enough everyone moves on.   After you die, do you leave a tiny void in the world, by people missing you for something like your wisdom, or things you did or the smile you invoked.   If you leave an impact on this world and it’s people, then on your demise, that impact remains – whether it be something as simple as strong values you left behind for your children, or something you created that persists after your death – and thus your presence remains after your body is gone.  

Assessing impact is tough however. When a wealthy person writes a large check for a cause, their impact really is not that much more than someone who does something small within their means – regardless of whether society perceives it differently.  Thus, impact is a personal thing – it can be as small as doing little things to make the world a happier place for people around you or volunteering ones time or fighting for a cause.  For a musician it is the music left behind for others to enjoy, for a poet is the lasting beauty of a thoughtful poem.  There is no measure of impact, except on a personal level, one’s own honest assessment of whether it exists.

Value equation:

So, the value equation for my life now ends up looking something like this:

Value of my life = EG  +  PE  + I + PI  + EV

Where EG is the value of the Experiences Gained

PE is the potential for gaining more experiences and is usually a function of remaining life expectancy

I is the Impact on the world so far

PI is the potential for more impact, again usually a function of remaining life expectancy

EV is the Economic Value, which also diminishes with age.

Most of these are non-objective, but if you could somehow convert EG, PE, I and PI into a monetary value, the equation would give a value that could be compared against something – like the value of your life insurance.

But instead, we could create a score. Say we divide our life into 8 deciles, each of 10 years.

Each factor has a score between 0 and 1 for each 10 years.  

At birth, EG = 0, PE = 8 as you have the full potential for experiences.  Similarly, I = 0 and PI = 8.   EV =5 if you reach your full economic value of 5 decades of work.   So, the total value is 23. 

At any age, you estimate each variable and come up with a score, e.g.

At the age of 40: Have you actively been seeking out experiences or been just biding your time? Let’s say you think you have been mediocre, so you give yourself 0.5 for each year for a score of 2. But you decide that you will make a conscious effort to seek our more experiences and set PE = 4.   Similarly, Impact – if you have volunteered, helped people etc all your life, you may set I = 4 and PI = 4.  For EV, you have worked 2 decades and have contributed well to both the economy and yourself and you expect to continue to , so EV is the full 5.  Your overall score is 19 – which is great compared to the maximum of 23.

My value

This entire discussion is not to be taken as some kind of manifesto for justifying suicide. It is the opposite really. Ivan illitch in Tolstoy’s novel “The death of Ivan Iliych” suddenly found himself facing death and went through denial, anger, depression and finally resignation and acceptance – thus his death was far more painful and distraughtful to him and those around him than just the physical pain.  I do not want to be in such a situation.   By creating a framework for evaluating the value of my life from various angles, it give me the ability to assess where I am and in doing so, I am actually quote satisfied in knowing that my life did have value and thus if anything happened to me suddenly, I would go peacefully with no regrets about my life.

What is the meaning of life?  I would dare not say I could answer this definitively, for sure not at the overarching level of the meaning of life for humankind as a whole, but even at the individual level, as there is no one answer, no playbook, no neat solution to an equation. Humans don’t have an obligation to define the meaning of life in universal terms, each of us will do it our way. Through this paper, I will attempt to provide some insight into how I look at the meaning of my life, i.e., my own personal significance and purpose in life.  In philosophy it is often said that you leave a course with more questions than answers, however in this case, through the various readings and lesson, I can say that I end with a little more clarity and a little more validation, which I hope to present there. The paper will briefly explore the thoughts of many authors and historical figures we read in class, as well as some we did not – each having a different level of attraction to me – thus in the conclusion I will be incorporating elements of several of them.

The focus will be largely the secular view.  Religion does offer a simple solution to the question, which, by requiring a brute force belief in an infinite entity, namely God, it offers us finite beings a way to stop looking at things with finiteness and derive our meaning from the association with God. I also usually offers us a story of a continued existence of our lives in an immaterial form, i.e., our souls. In a single sweep, this idea of life after death attacks all the classic problems of life’s meaning and with such an all-encompassing solution it is no surprise that the idea of life after death has been so uniformly embraced.  However, to attach life’s meaning to something that is entirely unprovable feels incomplete and is left for wanting.

The secular view I will use, in developing my conclusion, is that of only being concerned with our life as it is from birth to death and not considering the possibility of anything before or after.  It is the physicalist or ontological monism view of the human life also seen in the existentialist view, which, as explained by Jean-Paul Sartre¹, has the basic principle that existence precedes essence. So, the focus is sharply on the issue of being then life then death – and that’s it.   The result of this should not be mutually exclusive to the theist view, in fact it could be supplementary.  In finding purpose by only considering the life as we know it, combined with the view of afterlife for meaning as well, the result could be finding meaning both during our material and immaterial life, thus the exercise has value for all personal stances.

The futility of life

French philosopher Camus² believed that the story of Sisyphus had a symbolic message in that many of life’s specific tasks certainly feel futile, but what is more discouraging is that the sum of a person’s life efforts may seem pointless and thus utterly void of meaning. He calls life absurd as we go about continuously struggling and asking the universe about the meaning of our life, yet there is no answer to be had.  Thomas Nagel³ also says life is absurd, but from the point of view of the individual, in that there is a severe disconnect between our aspirations and reality. He says we take ourselves and lives too seriously with an elevated sense of self-importance to no end at all.  Schopenhauer⁴, in the Buddhist traditions, says life is nothing but suffering – caused by our continuous strivings, our longings which only result in temporary satisfaction and then suffering again as new wants take over – for him life is like a pendulum continuously swinging between pain and boredom.   

These writers and many others also express a dire picture of our cosmic insignificance, “To think of one’s place in the cosmos”, as Susan Wolf⁵ puts it “is to recognise the possibility of a perspective … from which one’s life is merely gratuitous.”  In a similar vein, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal⁶ wrote “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the little space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

Sartre said that we pursue goals which, from a detached standpoint, we can see don’t really matter. But we continue to act as though they do. In the presence of other people, everyone insists on their own reality and thus other people tend to get in the way of our pursuit of our own goals. His famous line, “Hell is other people”⁷ means that people are always at odds with each other, yet they are always looking at each other for validation – thus another absurdity of life.

All this combined pessimism can easily lead to a severe feeling of existential angst – the overwhelming feeling of the contingency of everything around us and the shear and utter pointlessness of everything we do. All in all, at this point, we have a pretty bleak and dark view, presenting life as completely futile – from where it is difficult to see a path to meaningfulness. We will return to this and these authors a little later to explore such a path.

The beauty of life

We can all agree that life is beautiful and human life is rather amazing. Bertrand Russell⁸, who believes in the scientific approach, expresses a reverence for human capacity and the amazingness of our biology.  Ronald Dworkin⁹ argues that human beings have intrinsic value due to this awesomeness.  I will not debate whether human life has intrinsic value or not, rather the question here is, assuming it does have value, is this value a basis for life having meaning or personal significance? Shelly Kagan¹⁰ in discussing the value of a life, presupposes a neutral container theory of life as opposed to the valuable container theory – the latter which ascribes value to the life of the human being devoid of any content of experience, actions etc. I concur with Kagan in the view that meaning is derived only when there is something in the container. An analogy is a that of a mug – it is just something made of glass or clay and thus has intrinsic value as it is, but it derives meaning when it is filled with something and avails that to drink. None of this is to say that life itself has no value, but that the existence of life presents the potential for meaning, not meaning by itself.

The utility of life

G.E. Moore¹¹ believes of life has usefulness insofar that it has had a net positive contribution to the intrinsic value of the universe. Metz¹² uses this to discuss a utilitarian theory of meaningfulness.  While we will later explore our meaning as it relates to other people, to derive meaning solely based on some measure of increase in net value is not an attractive concept at all.  It also is worrisome in that the issue of commodification of human activity as highlighted by Marx, could be justified as a creator of meaningful lives. The utilitarian view also has underpinnings of an objective tallying to determine value or meaning, a generalized version of which is entirely impossible to create. Thus, I choose to reject this altogether. (Interestingly, the NBC philosophical comedy “The Good Place” mocks this with a point scoring method applied to a life at death, resulting in no soul going to the good place for over 500 years!)

The spirituality of life

There is a natural tendency to associate spirituality with religion.  However, here I use the term spirituality in a non-religious sense as to mean the essence of human beings that is beyond just our physical being. The Dalai Lama¹³ says “I believe that it is essential to appreciate our potential as human beings and recognize this importance of inner transformation…I call this the spiritual dimension in our life.”  The practice of spirituality, or mindfulness, has been written about extensively, not only by Buddhist philosophers but incorporated into modern western thought as well, as critical to creating happiness and thus meaning in our life. Wallace¹⁴ described a way of training your mind to be present in each moment – to not get lost in cacophonous, self-centered thoughts. The key to thinking, he said, is “being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to,” noticing what’s “hidden in plain sight all around us.”  Spirituality is also largely associated with detachment, which we see not only in the concept of moksa in the ancient Indian purushastras, as explained by Nath¹⁵ but also in contemporary writing such as Victor Frankl¹⁶, who says meaning can only be achieved by resisting temptations and attachment of lower pleasures of materialism and hedonism.  Al-Kindi¹⁷ describes how attachment creates sadness in our lives. There is a clear and important message in all this that living life with a sense of spirituality, mindfulness and detachment, will lead to a happier life, which definitely contributes to wellbeing.

The continuity of life

As indicated in the beginning of this paper, we are only concerned about our life as it is and not a personal afterlife. However, Scheffler¹⁸ introduces us to the concept of a collective afterlife – in the sense that human beings and the universe continues to exist after we personally cease to exist. Through a thought experiment, he demonstrates how deeply attached we are to the continued existence of humankind and the world around us that it profoundly impacts the way we life our live when we are alive – so much so that is has the effect of giving significant meaning and value to things we do in our live, in spite of knowing that these activities may be experienced by people we may never know.  This is an incredible variable in the equation of finding meaning and personal significance in our life.

The activity of life

We have now a picture of a) some value of life itself, but no meaning; b) the utter finiteness of life making it seem pointless; c) a transcendental concept of happiness and, d) a thought that the world after us still has importance to us.  The challenge now is:  do we have the ability to bring it altogether and create a meaningful life?

We need to first revisit the pessimists, as they surely cannot get off the hook this easy! Sure enough Camus offers a recommendation, urging us to live rebelliously and Nagel suggests to live with a sense of irony.   To restate in a different way – do not take life’s issues too seriously, thus tempering our sense of self-importance (Nagel) and try to rise above life’s issues, grabbing them by the horn (Camus) – both which seem like wise advice.

Secular existentialism assists us as well with its view that existence precedes essence, thus our existence is just that, but our real nature comes from our experiences during our existence. Sartre strongly defended existentialism as humanism and championed our own human nature, which condemns us to be free. On this view, our fundamental goal in life is to overcome our contingency and to become the foundation of our own being. In doing this he challenges us to live authentically and dismiss bad faith, the latter which results from living without taking freedom properly on board.  He says, “In choosing myself, I choose to be the type of being I want to be in the presence of others.”  From a pragmatic sense, complete authenticity is almost impossible to achieve, but by being mindful of it, we will be reminded to try to live with as much authenticity as possible.Sartre does assist us by providing some constraints, in that while exercising our freedom, we should not be permitted to make choices that impairs or inhibits the freedom of other – which is a fundamental tenet of living with respect for others around us. In a similar vein, Wallace advises us to not only look at the world from our own individual perspective, but from the perspective of others around us and let that guide how we behave.

So, far we have collected some good ideas on how to live our life as it pertains to our behavior, choices, attitude, and those around us, all of which is accretive to meaningfulness. But we still need to figure what do to in our lives to create meaning.

Before we go on to discussing actions, we need to think about resolving the question of cosmic insignificance, which can be a dreadful destroyer of meaningfulness of our actions. Paul Ricoeur¹⁹ offered a solution to this problem as he writes, “On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.”  The grandeur of the cosmos does make our life’s efforts seem irrelevant by comparison, but we nevertheless can find meaning by changing the perspective of our view.  Look at a tree through the wide-angle lens of a camera and you may see some small dark specs, switch to a zoom lens and you see those dark specs are beautiful birds, each unique and colorful and interesting. That is how our lives are – by zooming in and looking at our lives within the sphere our own experience and existence, we will be able to grasp and comprehend our own personal significance within the incomprehensible cosmic infiniteness.

This leads us to Robert Nozick²⁰, one of the most influential contemporary philosophers on the meaning of life.  As finite beings, in order to find meaning, we attach ourselves to other finite things and beings. This leads to nothing in terms of finding meaning so we continue with this regress looking for a stopping point– which only can come from an infinite being, i.e., God.  This transcendence to the infinite is Nozick’s explanation for how religion offers up God as a way to give meaning to our lives. Nozick then uses this concept to propose a limited transcendence version for our lives which does not require God in the picture.  By reaching out in our lives to things, entities, activities that have intrinsic value we continuously add meaning to our lives. Each time we do this, it is a limited transcendence and by continually attaching ourselves to value as they appear on our radar of life, we increase the overall worth of our life. The limited transcendence is an iterative approach to continue to build meaning in life, we attach ourselves to something of value, then possibly stabilize our lives and then seek something of value again.  This concept very much fits in with our zoom lens view, in which, instead of focusing too wide, you focus on yourself in the center of a circle of value that you can connect to and transcend, then you do it again.  Nozick offers up many examples of such activities, while not being prescriptive, such as involvement in political, social, community causes; family and friends; learning and trying new things, attending a Philosophy class on Tuesday night etc. The elegance of this approach is that it keeps us grounded in reality as opposed to getting bogged down or depressed by the vastness of the universe. It is a very practical, rational approach to continuously adding worthiness to your life. Sonja Lyubomirsky, through empirical studies on happiness, also comes up with a parallel conclusion to Nozick, in which happiness is created by focusing on activities that are intentional as opposed to trying to change your life circumstances.  Thus, by continuously engaging in activities that broaden the experience of life, activities similar to those proposed by Nozick, there is an overall increase in life’s happiness and meaning. We see similar conclusions by Frankl, who says that the search for meaning is found in work and in relationships (love). I will also briefly mention the Indian purushastras²² which talks of 4 spheres of activity of life.  Artha describes activities for the well-being of life, which includes our work, careers and things we do to provide for life; Kama, represent activities to satisfy the sensory pleasures of life, such as art, music, sexual pleasure; Dharma represents righteousness and principles of life and finally Moksha, representing freedom. All these are important to keep in balance for a good, meaningful life. A contemporary interpretation of this is that we need to do things in life to keep busy, to prosper as well as do things for pleasure – but with the governance of righteousness, ethics and doing good for others around us. However, to remain free, we need to not get consumed or completely attached to these materialistic activities.

The recipe for life

We now have all the pieces to create our recipe – let’s call it the Apple Pie of Life.  Just like a recipe has ingredients and actions, we can now summarize a set of how’s and what’s.

This is the recipe I would offer anyone seeking conversation on the meaning of life (note, I hesitate to call it advice or a playbook, as this is my take and each person’s could be different). My own daughter was recently suffering from severe existential angst and depression, and I used many of these concepts to be able to help her to not focus on the pointlessness, but to think authentically and look for activities that are of value, and not trite, to give her meaning.  I am happy to say that it helped her tremendously.

Objections?  Of course, no recipe for the meaning of life can be perfect and every construct will have objections.  One clear objection would be the lack for objectivity in determining the worth or value of the activities. My response to that is there should be no objective values, no prescription because of the fact that what is of value to one person may have completely different value to next due to different life starting points and conditions.  Each person should find value based on their own perspective and situation, however small or big that may be – it is not a competition, there are no medals.

Another objection would be the absence of some moral code because the inherent freedom message seems unchecked.  On the surface, this may seem valid, however inherent in the two sets in our recipe above is a humanistic moral code centered on the principles of respect and consideration for others around us. This is very similar to religious morality or concepts like the Golden Rule and categorical imperative, without the need of a dictum from religion – rather it is left for us to individually realize and follow them as our internal moral compass.

A third objection could be that this largely centers around activity to give meaning, but ultimately all activity is pointless as death is certain.  The response to this would be:  as it pertains to activity – we can choose no activity or to have activity.  No activity guarantees life to be meaningless. Thus, activity is the only way to create some meaning.  As Taylor²³ elegantly states about doing “At the same time, the strange meaningfulness they possess is that of the inner compulsion to be doing just what we were put here to do, and to go on doing it forever. This is the nearest we may hope to get to heaven, but the redeeming side of that fact is that we do thereby avoid a genuine hell.”

Conclusion

In crisscrossing various philosophical thought from ancient to contemporary, from East to West, I have presented a construct of a meaning of life that personally speaks to me. Nietczche²⁴ goads us to ask ourselves if we had to live our life all over again exactly as it was, would we be happy doing it?   With all due respect to Nietzsche, the binary nature of his question is incorrect – and I would rather ask myself:   During my life and near the end of my life – as I was eating or finishing my Apple Pie, would I bake it again?  Maybe tweak it a little here or there, a little less sugar, a little more cinnamon – but would I want to live my life again essentially as the same person with the opportunity to adjust as needed – if I followed the recipe, I would answer with a resounding affirmative and be happy that I have a meaningful life.

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” Viktor Frankl

Works Cited

A madman runs out onto the street screeching “I seek God! I seek God!” and then continues to yell ““God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers…There was never a greater event – and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history before this!”.   This is the Nietzsche most notable and controversial statement in his famous book The Gay Science,

Nietzsche was not stating that he believed in the existence of God, but he was using the metaphor to state that the view of God as described in pre-renaissance history has been rendered irrelevant and Is not needed given the enlightenment from scientific and rational thought.

The death of God does however imply the existence God and the existence does imply some form of presence of God.

I am not going to debate or engage in a discussion of the existence of God – this has been, and continues to be, debated for thousands of years and will continue to be despite the futility.

I am also not going to discuss, if one believes in some form of God, whether it is some physical being, some energy form, a white bearded old man up there somewhere or something else.

Just about all versions of God describe it as including most of or all the properties of being omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent etc.   – this description befitting a superhero.

Imagine if you were a superhero with these powers, thus even more powerful and super than even Superman.   Then just like Superman, you would be able to see some crime or transgression happening somewhere and use your superpowers to intervene – to save the mortal beings that revere you.

So where was this superhero with such all-powerful capabilities when a gunman walked into a school in Uvalde, TX?  Where was this superhero when Lanza killed 20 children in Sandy Hook?  Where was this superhero when millions of innocents Jews were gassed to death?

Of course, we all know that it was absent, completely missing in action.

Does this mean that our almighty superhero God, does not exist, or is not a powerful as we make it to be, or it is not a caring God or is insensitive to our well-being?

God has it good.  When good things happen to us, we say it was God’s grace.  When bad things happen, it is either fate or human evil.  Religion neatly gave God a pass on evil by using the argument that God gave us free will so if we use this for evil, so be it.

Yet we continue to pray to such a God, asking for things, asking to be saved, asking for protection, asking for health, wealth and success.  There is no large God Microphone that is listening to these prayers and there is no response to these prayers, which are essentially transactional and there is nothing on the other side of the transaction.  Religion tells us to revere and worship God and obey its commands,  they tell us to worship and praise the lord and please him, religion tells us to sacrifice and bestow upon the gods in order to receive their grace, religion tells us we need to keep praying and chanting gods praises otherwise there are consequences.  It goes on and on.  People are told If they sacrifice an animal, or do acts of repentance or perform all sorts of rituals, they will get the favors of the gods.  Is this the image of a an all loving, all caring, empathetic god or one that is petty, egotistical and transactional?  Religion has made all this up to create a fear of god in order to gain control of our lives.

Back to the madman – he is right.  God is dead.  Not because it existed and then died somehow, but simply that there is no presence, direct involvement or saving us by God. No matter what form of God you believe in or not, the reality is that God does not directly intervene or get involved in our daily lives, whether it be at an individual personal level or even a catastrophic level like a disease or war.   I don’t necessarily say don’t pray or chant or whatever makes you feel good, but recognize that this is a way to invoke our internal strength as human beings – do not think it is a call to a superior being to save you or grant you something.

As Kevin O’Leary says on Shark Tank when a pitch is not relevant to him,”…you are dead to me..”  similarly, God is essentially dead to us.

The options trading boom shows little sign of fizzling out. Average daily volumes of cleared options are more than double pre-pandemic levels, and continue to rise, according to data from the Options Clearing Corp.
When bets go sour, dealers are sometimes forced to liquidate options portfolios. This process can result in slippage and additional losses due to lack of liquidity. So, firms often hold a liquidity add-on component to the margin or capital requirement, which is meant to cover the risk of such losses.
Working out the add-on is hard enough for cash equity portfolios. It’s even harder for options.\

I proposed a new model for estimating the liquidation cost of options that uses open interest and volume data to account for the way that dealers adjust their quotes during periods of market stress

The article was published in Risk.Net in Feb 2023 and can be found here:

https://www.risk.net/comment/7956003/options-liquidation-can-be-costly-how-costly

However, if you don’t have access to Risk.net, you can view the article here

“cee ek sau bathis” is a transliteration of C132 – a house number in Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi.

Over 53 years ago my parents were given a small piece of land in Sarvodaya Enclave in lieu of a plot they owned on Ring Road as the government needed the latter for city expansion (a concept called eminent domain).  Sarvodaya Enclave was in the middle of nowhere at that time, the closest landmark being the IIT Delhi campus and all IIT’s were originally built outside the main city.  Back then I would hear my parents grumble how they were thrown out in the jungle.

Our family built our house in India in 1971 and we moved into it after relocating from the US in 1972.  There wasn’t much around at that time – the large stretch of land in front of us was literally “a jungle”, only half the colony had houses, there was a little village nearby from where you could catch a bus to go to Mehrauli or Green Park for any shopping.  The house was designed mostly by mummy and was unique, with a veranda with a fountain in the middle and a basement which was unheard of in Delhi. We planted many of the trees that you see in front of the house.  At the age of 10, moving from Lincoln, Nebraska to this house was a shock, but also an adventure – one that I soon embraced and made the most of. After the first year, I found myself in the school nearby – a completely different type of school called Mother’s International that was attached to the Aurobindo Ashram.  

For many years life in Sarvodaya Enclave and Mother’s school for me turned out to be one full of little adventures.   I remember jumping in mud piles in the “jungle” in the monsoons; going around in a big group of kids on Holi and being dunked in colored water tanks; playing cricket with other colony kids wherever we could find a patch; sneaking into the hostel area of the school at night to hang out with friends – a lot of “”fatru giri” as we would call it.  Delhi was a big city, but our area had a small town feel and thus was our own Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn type adventures in it.  Things just seemed simpler, like the whole family going up on the roof to sleep in jute charpoy’s in summer nights – and I would sleep until the morning sun literally roasted me.

Each Diwali, mummy’s family would visit in the morning and in the evening Papa’s family would visit and we had one puja at home after which the highlight of firecrackers brought by Vinod-bhaiya.  Prior to Diwali was shopping in Chandni Chowk with my father for clay things and toys. Every festival like Rakhi, would mean family visiting and lots of mithai.  C-132 became an important destination for mummy’s side of the family such that eventually 3 other family members moved in to the same colony over the years.

I remember my first bicycle- an old black Hero bike in India – and how I would proudly ride it everywhere – many days riding back and forth in front of Snigdha’s house hoping she would notice me!  When Vinod bhaiya got their very first scooters (a big thing back then), he would come over and then eventually teach me how to ride and let me borrow it (unbeknownst to my mother!) for joy rides.  I travelled all over Delhi in the buses knowing all bus routes and loved jumping on number 503 and going to Chandni chowk.  The visits to Naniji in Rohtak Road meant being pampered with food and her letting me buy lots of comic books from the store near her. I got to know those living in the local village and to this day Rajinder is one of my best friends and I remember sitting on the ground in his village house eating paranthas and ghee.   There always seemed to be something going on between the house , the relatives, the school and friends that made life just magical and full of things to do – and trouble to get into.

I eventually moved into the basement and it became my “adda”  – with its own entrance, me and my friends would come and go as we pleased.  I had a full electronics lab down there and tinkered with all sorts of stuff – making me the coolest kid among my friends.  I managed to buy a 10-speed bike from some diplomat and rode all over on it – till this day people remember me riding around on that bike, like which they had never seen before.

I can go on and on as I have tons of stories from those 8-9 years before I went to IIT and many more over the pursuing four.  Between friends, family and all the things I did, it is a time of my life that is forever and deeply etched in my memory and my heart.

Fast forward a few decades and Sarvodaya Enclave has become an prime colony in South Delhi. The house was rebuilt or fixed up several times, mummy continued to live there and established deep roots for herself in Delhi.  As my life in the US evolved, the visits became more infrequent, but every visit brought back all the nostalgia, all the memory.   The house became like a museum of mummy’s passions for antiques and old furniture and Indian art.  I shared a bit of the same interest in old things myself over the years.   Papa moved back in 2009 after 25 or so years.  Mummy passed away in the house in 2017 and Papa passed away in 2018.

What was left was a house – bricks and mortar and full of things – but mostly full of memories and a lot of what represented and embodied my mother.  Her presence was still felt everywhere.

Of course, the house had to be taken down, of course it had to be rebuilt and converted to modern flats and doing so unlocked a ton of wealth.  But Cee ek sau bathis was the address for my family for over 50 years, it was the place that my mother and father both died, it represents the connection to the country of my origin, those from whom I came from and it is where all the vivid memories of my childhood live. 

Delhi will change, Sarvodaya Enclave will change, friends and family will pass, and in some years, it will be all be unrecognizable to me. The connections to the physical will start getting buried in the sands of time, leaving only fond memories in my heart and soul –  but until then Cee Ek Sau Bathis remains an important part of me.  

(forgiveness)

We get old only once, and thus will never know how they feel.  We judge them, get irritated at them.  Maybe the guilt trip is their way of trying to reach out, maybe the erratic behavior is a reflection of their fear of mortality. I really don’t know and may not find out until I grow old. But in the meanwhile they pass on and are gone forever, leaving us looking back with regrets.

The pursed lip smiles
The determined gait
Her unbounded generosity
And endless energy
The way she called me “beta”
The tear in her eye
As I turned and left
I remember all this ever so well

The missed mothers day call
The poem I never read
The ceremony I did not attend
The birthday present never sent
The gratitude not expressed
The three words rarely said
The attitude I showed
And missing her last breath

It’s been five years
I still cannot hold back the tears
I would give five years of my life
For five minutes with her
To hold her, talk to her
And beg
for forgiveness.

Dec 11, 2022

The need for a consistent regulatory framework

Summary

Equity option margin requirements in the U.S. markets are usually determined by either a Regulation T rule for regular customer accounts, covering most retail customers, or by Customer Portfolio Margin covering more sophisticated option portfolios.

The result is a fragmented, inconsistent options margining framework in the U.S. that needs an overhaul, recommendations for which are provided at the end.

Click here to download the paper.

We have learned about the Purusarthas with the different activity spheres represented by Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksa.  We have read many texts with stories of characters navigating each of these.  We now need to design our “Good Life Compass” incorporating these along with a description on how to use it. The word “compass” however is be taken figuratively and not literally as it could represent some other form of a device or guide.

To design a compass, we need to first understand if all these spheres should be included.  We have seen constructs of just dharma, artha and kama with moksa either on top of them or off to the side with some form of connection.  In the texts we do notice that there is a lack of theorization of the group of 3 or 4, but focus on each one individually. Scholars offer varying opinion on this.  Halbfass¹, says “..[all four of ]the puruṣārthas are simultaneously essential attributes and constituents of humanity. It is in the nature of humanity to be an arthin [a being with goals].”  In the text themselves, we see in MDhŚ² it says that  “…the established teaching is that the triple path is the best”, leaving moksha aside.

Is moksa even an activity sphere at all? Moksa is understood to be the cessation of suffering, the attainment of bliss, release from the cycle of rebirth, etc. and thus devoid of actual activity as understood by the other 3 activity spheres.  Even Yudhiṣṭhira in the MBh³ says of moksa. “One cannot attain moksa by doing any deed. Know that what is going to be all comes to be. Even he who lacks some of the group of three finds moksa”

This suggests it should stand on its own.  Malamoud⁴  says “…it is always possible to make dharma, artha or kama into the + 1 that encompasses the two other terms in the list, and the moksa to boot..”  and continues to say  “..in the usual interpretation, it cannot encompass the other purusarthas, specially artha and kama, as not only does it transcend them, but, also negates them. Their functioning may be taken as a positive sign of the fact that not only has moksa not yet been achieved, but that it is not even being striven for.” This suggests that moksa is mutually exclusive to the others in a way.

To determine how to incorporate moksa into our compass, I prefer to look at it from a contemporary life perspective, as after all, we are trying to define a good life compass for our life now.  In our pragmatic good life compass, instead of looking at moksa as a practice to lead one to an “ultimate felicity” such as nirvāṇa or think of this activity sphere as a form of renouncement for  achieving liberation from suffering in the cycle of rebirths, I prefer to look at it as a sense of freedom and lack of attachment. Not freedom within the socio-political world, but freedom from the strivings that generate and sustain agents in this world. Freedom from strivings and the great sense of power that this creates in oneself.

With this context, in the construct of the compass, I choose to have all the 4 together.  This is also suggested by Professor K. J. Shah⁵, in which he says that the purusarthas as goals of human life should be treated as interactional in character, and says, “We must realize that artha will not be a purusartha unless it is in accord with kama, dharma and moksa’, kama in turn will not be kama, unless it is in accord with dharma and moksa; and dharma will not be dharma, unless it too is in accord with moksa. Equally moksa will not be moksa without the content of dharma; dharma will not be dharma without the content of kama and artha. The four goals, therefore, constitute one single goal, though in the lives of individuals the elements may get varying emphasis for various reasons.”

So now we have our construct. But any good compass or guidance system requires, by definition, some objective measures.  These measures inform the compass and the user when something is out of balance, when one measure too large or too small – and these objective measures work together by way of a set of rules and logic.

Does such objectivity exist when it comes to the activity spheres in our compass, so that our compass knows how to guide us into living a good life?  There are certain qualities of objective measure, e.g. hierarchy in order to define the logic and exactly what defines balance. In additional a good guidance system will have achievable metrics and goals and “next steps” based on these. Do the components of our compass have such hierarchy, measure, metrics, rules etc.  We turn to the texts now to look for these.

First let us look at dharma. From the MDhŚ² we see that dharma is about who you are (as a member of a corporate group) and where you are in your phase of life. It is broad and capacious and thus very context sensitive. From the Ramayana we see several scenes in which dharma seems highly subjective and open to individual justification, such as the killing of Valin by Rama or the treatment of Soorpanaka by Rama and Lakshman.

In the Mahabharata, even with the clearly adharmic treatment of Draupadi, Bhiṣṃa can only say that, “As dharma is subtle, my dear, I fail to resolve your question in the proper way”
In addition, there is the plurality of authority in dharma with sva-dharma and sadharana dharma as we see when Bhima challenges Yudhishtra’s view when in the forest or when Arjun puts down his bow at the beginning of the Bhagawad Gita.

Throughout the texts we see little or no evidence of a measure or objectivity of dharma, in fact we even see the need to forsake dharma for the sake of dharma. This leaves us with a picture of dharma that is highly subjective, context sensitive, open to justification and very subtle – making it difficult to put into an instrument like a compass.

Now to look at artha, which is described as the means of life, and includes material prosperity, security and health of oneself and those one feels responsible for. The thriving of humans requires artha – that is, economic activity, wealth and its creation, worldly success, profit, political success and all that is necessary for human existence. Thus, it seems that artha should be measurable.  However, referring to the texts, once again we see no mention of a measure of prosperity or success.  In fact in the first chapter of the Panchatantra⁶ it says “Earning the money when you don ‘t have it, guarding what you have earned, increasing it as you guard it, and then giving it away to worthy people when it has increased- that is the way to live in this world” implying that having the wealth based on ones own needs and not the accumulation of wealth is one of the essence of artha. 

But Kautilya in the MR⁷ shows us that besides the instrumentality of artha there is a non-instrumental artha and for the sake of artha it could be required to put aside artha.

We also see that artha, like dharma, is justifiable and not always objective, as in the Panchatantra⁶ when Damanaka justifies having Pingalaka kill Sanjivaka because of what he considers bad policy.

Is there a hierarchy of dharma and artha?  In the MBh³ we are alerted to the dangers of setting aside Dharma for Artha as it leads to pretty much the destruction of the world, caused by Duryodhana who believed, “…the way of kings differs from the way of the world, and that therefore the king should endeavor always to think of his own profit (artha).”  The MBh³ suggests without maintaining Dharma, nothing is held together, pursue Artha, violate Dharma, and see, everything will fall apart.

But then we see episodes in the Ramayana of Rama forsaking his dharma when he banishes Sita in order to please the polity, thus for the sake of artha. In the MBh³ We see several incidents of deception, such as the killing of Drona, in which even Krishna says “…. we must put aside dharma and resort to stratagem to conquer him..”

So once again we come away with little objectivity and no clear metrics for even the artha activity sphere as well as no clear hierarchy between dharma and artha and their juxtaposition being highly contextual.

Turning to Kama, which means desire, wish or longing. While often used to refer to sexual desire, it largely refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture and nature.  In the MBh³, Bhima says “Without Kāma, there cannot be any striving on any activity sphere. Seeking Dharma and Artha are entirely dependent upon Kāma. Even the seers were joined to Kāma when they were intent upon their asceticism…”.

Throughout the texts, there seems to continuous push and pull of extolling the virtues of kama with warnings of the dangers of kama. In the MBh³every imaginable form of uncontrolled kama and its consequences is depicted. Shantanu’s inability to control his longing for Satyavati.  Karna’s yearning for recognition and lust for status resulted in possibly unhealthy attachments. In the Gita, Krishna praised Kama but warned us against it too. So long as Kama is under your control, it is divine. When it goes haywire, it turns demoniac, which he advised Arjuna to renounce.
So once again we are left with little to no objectivity on the extent of kama as an activity.

The hierarchy between all the purusarthas has been the continuous subject of discussion and debate. Even in the Mahabharata, Yudhisthira, the four brothers and Vidura all have very different views on the relative position and importance of each.

Given the distinctive nature of each of the purusarthas and the lack of a prescriptive hierarchy,  the good life compass is highly context sensitive to each of us individually. Thus, it is clear that we can’t design an objective measuring instrument like a compass or a gyroscope or a FitBit to guide us to a good life. However, is there something than can still be designed? It is possible that our compass is purely informational, with no judgement, no recommendation, no guidance or advice.  Possibly a place where we can record our activities and it informs us of whether we are been more focused or involved in one or there (or several). This would then let us rebalance our activities and not let any one get out of hand or destroy the others. This seems like it would be a useful device or say app.

But then, I would venture to say, after the realization and use of such and app, one should simply throw it away.  Let this become innate to us, in our minds, hearts and souls, such that we don’t need something to tell us that we may be out of balance, but we know and sense that from within.  So, when you get too busy in the rat race at work, you reflect on this and take time for your spouse, kids and some enjoyment. When you are out hanging out with buddies and playing poker too often, you remember your obligations as a provider to your family.   Then the compass becomes within us and is always helping guide us in these spheres of human activity, maintaining balance and harmony and leading us through this life as a good life.

• References
• 1. Wilhelm Halbfass India and Europe. An Essay in Understanding.
• 2. MDhS: Manavadharmasastrs, Manu’s Code of Law
• 3. Mbh:  The Mahabharata
• 4.Charles Malamoud, On the rhetoric and semantics of purusartha
• 5.Daya Krishna. Indian Philosophy, a counter perspective
• 6. Patrick Olivelle, Panchatantra, The book of India’s Folk Wisdom
• 7. Mudrarakshasa