exploratory; pretentiously, life, purpose, validation & capitalism; in one flight to Entebbe, Uganda

Often pretentiously, and sometimes with a desire for deeper inspection, we tend to repeatedly ask: what is the purpose in life? We have short term goals, and purpose in everyday life — eat food, go to school, do X, do Y, and just as we are susceptible to anthropomorphizing everything, we are susceptible to assigning purpose to everything. The universe must have a purpose, and so does life. Albert Camus would disagree, and so would I. Without a supernatural being like God (for all likelihood, I believe does not exist), there cannot possibly be any purpose to the universe or life. Camus said that angst comes precisely from this desire for meaning and purpose, and the lack of any answer from the universe in return. And sure, with some semantic maneuvering, we can devise purpose in life - someone tersely might posit that our meaning is evolutionary — our meaning comes from the fact that we expand, we reproduce. But it should be abundantly clear that when we talk of purpose, or meaning, we are talking of something more spiritual than a mere mechanism like evolution. Meaning demands to be felt, meaning demands to be vulnerable and personal. Nietzsche would argue such spiritual meaning comes from the will to power. Hegel, and others would probably argue that such a spiritual meaning comes from the desire for self-recognition. Is self-recognition the purpose? Is it fulfillment? Surely, self-recognition (and therefore fulfillment) does feel personal, and vulnerable, and universal. One can easily, and reasonably boil any action, from entirely self-centered to performative to completely altruistic, fundamentally down to pride, and self-recognition. Perhaps then, it would not be too farfetched to argue that perhaps Camus was wrong — we always had an answer for what our purpose is, and that it was always within us — a drive for recognition, and subsequently fulfillment.

Let me take a more personal turn to present my point. The desire for love, for example. Is it not entirely a product of the need for recognition and validation? Do not most forms of love demand reciprocity? If I care so deeply about this person, do I not expect this person to love me back? Or in cases where I do not: is it not the case that I completely recognize with that person as a whole? For example, I might love my brother without expecting anything from him, but isn’t the cause of love the same as me loving my body parts, or my personal belongings. So, caring about those people or wishing them the best — is in some form — a greater care of the self, a form of self-recognition. For the most part, love involves reciprocity — an understanding that the other person is the center of the universe, and the expectation that the other person views you in the same light. This idea of recognition seeps through most of the relationships. Perhaps this can explain the desire for unwavering attention. I think it was Sartre who said that romantic love never works out and is fated to fail because of this inherent tension: the desire to be seen versus the desire to not be the object (or somewhere along the lines). I am not sure if I agree with the never working out part, yet I believe there is truth to the fact that romantic love is some form of tension between attention, and independence. Each subject wants themself to be the center of the universe, and also affirm the other as the center of the universe. This herculean task might be why relationships fail, or become toxic (say an emotionally abusive relationship where one does not allow the other to affirm themself). A healthy form of relationship then is a synergy of reciprocal affirmation — a paradox. What I would like to believe is that it is a non-impossible paradox! Perhaps, one solution to the paradox is when both the partners recognize as a one. Then, affirming the self is the same as affirming the other. Both are independent at the same time, and when one affirms the self, the other is automatically affirmed. No wonder pop culture spews out words like “chemistry”, and “compatibility” in relationships all the time. It is this same expression for desire for recognition as one to solve the problem of reciprocal recognition.

Regarding friendships, there are already set expectations. Surely, they are all negotiable, and subjective as per friendships but surely we cannot say that any friendship starts with an empty slate. Even in cases when there has not been explicit conversation of expectations, there are some implied expectations. For example, if a friend is hurt and needs you to help them go to hospital, do you not feel some sort of responsibility to help them even if you have something else pressing on hand? (for cases where you do not want to, perhaps you should question if you actually are friends). The whole idea of friendship rests on the implied expectations, that are set on the board as soon as you become friends, and are open to negotiation either with explicit conversations, or when you or the friend updates their expectations based on your interactions (I assume it is in fact a dialectic process, which involves your expectations, and your expectations having inherent contradictions with your friend’s expectations, and with time, forming a synthesis where you have an updated version of the earlier expectation, but that might be theme for a article of its own).

In today’s corporate world, validation comes from the value assigned to you based on what you can give out to the capitalistic world. People, including myself, get their validation from the density of their work — the more work I get done (and the more it can serve other people), the more I am valued for the work. Perhaps this is no further than examples of viral media in social media apps. The creator/the worker acts as a servant to consumers. Soon enough, this tendency becomes instinctual. We love working a lot, and feeling good by the work we do aka workaholism. Small children are taught that working hard, and working to serve others is to be rewarded. This sentimental education breeds generations of workers, who are valued in so far as they work (vast majority, as corporate slaves). A professor in a business class I attended said, either you work for money or the money works for you. And no wonder the money works for the top few percent by exploiting the ones who work for money. The slogan makes it seem like each person has a choice, and it is because people choose to work for money that they cannot be as good as those for whom the money works. However, the money works class precisely exists by forcing the works for money class. The money works class gets validation by earning more money — because after a certain point, money becomes a proxy for power. The works for money then gets its validation from a) merely surviving b) pretending to be higher class. I do not mean the second point in a derogatory connotation (I myself am and have grown up in a family and a country that has been a part of works for money class). The works for money class is first forced to work tirelessly to make sure ends are met. Most people struggle with this stage, and are left to work for the capitalists throughout their life. Some slightly better people (who have figured out how to survive, and have some savings) are then enticed with some slight glimpse into the rich life. Now, we need to understand that all this glimpse is another way to capitalize on their lack of self-fulfillment.

One recent example I have is what I noticed when I was recently in Sri Lanka. In Colombo, I came across this fancy mall called One Galle Face. Since I was visiting the mall on Christmas, there was a huge Christmas tree at the center of the mall. Me and my friends went to the mall in the car, and we entered the mall through parking. We did not have to go through any security checks, and all we had to reach in the mall was to take the nearest elevator to the ground floor. On the other hand, there was a huge line in front of the mall for people who did not own vehicles (thus could not access parking). People were queuing up in the scorching sun, their shirts covered in sweat, to pass the security check, and enter the mall. I watched people stand in the queue for hours, only to come inside the mall, click pictures of the tree, a couple of selfies, roam around for a while, and then go back. I am pretty sure most of the people that day (at least not the ones who did not own cars) did not buy anything, and were at the mall for the pictures. The pictures were probably meant to be posted on social media. Why do I recount this story? The capitalist class provides these small windows of opportunities for poor people (the work for money class) to feel as if they are a part of the rich class. This pretense is then supposed to a) provide them short-term fulfillment, and b) instill the notion that further fulfillment is possible if worked harder. For one day, the poor people could pretend to be rich class, take pictures in a fancy mall, and post in their social media (just like rich people would).

Another example of such a glimpse is travelling the world. Travelling to new places, out of curiosity, has always been a part of human nature. From explorers like Columbus, to Earthians as a whole trying to find a way to travel in space, we have an intrinsic zeal to know more (might be for different reasons, but let us take it for granted for now). However, with the advent of commercial travel (establishment of corporate travel industries), we have a new narrative for fulfillment, often peddled today in advertisements, and Instagram reels: A life not travelled is not a fully lived. Rich people can afford business class airplane fares, expensive luxurious hotels, and cabs everywhere they go. What they end up doing is travelling multiple places, and posting pictures on social media. Capitalizing on the fact that the poor people (especially the middle class) look forward to glimpses of the rich class for validation, budget airlines have become commonplace. Middle class people today cram their backpacks with barely enough clothes, take airplanes that have hours and hours of layover, and seats that make your backache worse, stay in sketchy hotels, walk for the entire day in the destination city without rest, eat at McDonald’s morning and day (because the ultra processed, commercialized food is way cheaper), and travel to multiple countries in equal number of days — one country a day. What this gives to them for all of this ordeal is a lot of pictures to post in their social media, a sense of fulfillment for doing something that makes your life full, and a window to what a rich life looks like. Without a doubt, the window is a façade. The instagram stories might look the same, the experience is usually the difference between I had a vacation in Maldives vs I visited 3 cities in 3 different countries in 3 days, I remember none, and I got diarrhea, and I am sleep deprived, but I cannot complain because I have to book Wizz/RyanAir flights for next weekend to 3 other countries. And the perverse sense of this becomes clearer when people say — But I do like such ad hoc backpack travelling. That’s the fun of it, isn’t it? Staying in murky hotels, and sleeping in Flix bus and RyanAir seats is fun because the industry glorifies the suffering. Without such glorification, they would not be able to target the population who are the most likely to give them millions of dollars. The corporate travel world has identified its most potent consumers — the ones hungriest for validation, and fulfillment. Also oftentimes, the narrative about the fun of backpack travelling comes from rich influencers trying to be eccentric because they want something new and fun in their life. With all the material fulfillment they could imagine already available to them, it is no surprise that they would glamorize living in scarcity. Surely, this example is not meant to rule out that people do not travel out of curiosity, and the drive to explore new places. I certainly have done so. But it is also not to deny that the corporate world has primed us in a way where we feel validated because we get a glimpse of what rich people do, even if it is an utter façade.

What I am trying to primarily get at is to show how much of our life is etched by the need for validation, recognition and fulfillment. In no way, however, this is just a property of a capitalistic world (even though it capitalizes on people’s instincts for the same). Even in a communist society, Karl Marx posits that creative work is the major source of fulfillment for humans. It is perhaps then not so much of a structural character, but more of what might be intrinsic to us humans.