The Entropy Casino

Today I'm blogging from a pub on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Yesterday I was on leave, but there was a company function which I had to participate. But it was fun, getting to banter with my colleagues whom I rarely get to meet.

Re-reading my blog post last week makes me smile, because I realised that I've not changed all these years. I've never been a practical person when it comes to pursuing a corporate career. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not my cup of tea.

But I've made good friends throughout my years of dalliance with the IT industry. Corporations will always give the appearance that they 'care' for their employees. But a corporation is not a tangible thing. Everyone is an employee. There's no such thing as loyalty to the company, except to your friends whom you've built a relationship with. The real company is your network of friends and acquaintances which you've forged a relationship with and carry throughout your career in the industry.

Corporations are just capitalist structures for maximising profits for shareholders. That's their main concern and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm all for capitalism, because greed, is the only electromotive force that moves humans. Greed is just a cynical way of saying human needs. As Gordon Gekko famously expounded in my favourite movie Wall Street, it has "marked the upward surge of mankind".

To live is to crave for things. But is that bad? No.

Just that, if you understand the roots of craving, you'll spare yourself a lot of unexpected pain. I say 'unexpected' because pain is inevitable every time we express a need. It is just unwise to be caught by surprise, as you suffer more as a result. Pain needs to be factored in for every need for pleasure.

Losing money is painful. But one needs to be aware of such a risk when going into business. A wise businessman would have quantified and considered all its implications; and having taken all that into consideration, makes a calculated risk to plunge ahead. The success or failure of his enterprise would depend on both ability and luck. 

To live is to take calculated risks.  No risk, no gain as they say. It is just wise to test one's tolerance to the amount of pain that one could be risking oneself to, before forging ahead. There's only so much that one could plan, in any human endeavour. You move ahead with what's reasonable. You'll still be taken by surprise by circumstances which you did not foresee. But factoring in the unforeseen is also part of the risk calculus.

If we shy away from pain, we'll never live. To be born into this mortal frame is to be subjected to pain. Your nervous system is created to sense both pain and pleasure in equal measure. It is only our delusion that makes us believe that the pursuit of the latter means an obliteration of the former.

To avoid pain, is to deny life itself. One might as well not to have been born.  When you suffer pain, do not take it personally; it is just nature's way of doing accounting. The quest for pleasure necessitates the production of pain. The house always wins in the entropy casino.

And we being pleasure-seekers must always be prepared to pay its price. As my dear departed friend, YL, who was an avid gambler, told me: whenever one goes to the casino, one must be aware that one is going to lose money; but that's alright as one is simply buying the excitement.

The enlightened gambler knows that. That way, you have quantified your suffering in dollars and cents. In a way, that's the best price to pay.