A realization that I had too late in life as an Indian — You're always solving a problem at a scale here, like that's the one universal constant here in every aspect of life, that you're almost always a part of trying to distinguish yourself from : Bheed (a large crowd)
Almost every problem in India is about scale — having way too many people — so we end up creating depersonalized processes, workflows, institutions, and tools with default setups that can handle a huge population.
Traveling in India, especially outside the big cities, you notice how every solution to a problem that feels pretty standardized and a bit detached is really all about our scale
The question is: how do you scale creative cognition, higher-order thinking, real invention across a bheed?
What would a true Cognitive Commons for India look like—something a village, a town, a crowd could draw from—not just to sort themselves, but to transform how they know, think, and create?
Solutions that feel cold or standardized aren't just bad design—they're coping mechanisms for scale
Take our edu system. Teaching to the test, exam-based learning, IIT-IIM prestige monopolies—they’re not designed to nurture creativity. They're signaling & filtering systems, built to sort millions
Everything, everywhere, is about distinguishing yourself from the bheed—the overwhelming crowd
Almost every 'default' we have in India—whether in education, hiring, public services—feels rigid, impersonal & often frustrating at an individual level. But it exists because it has to work for a bheed
Every sucky default for every problem space in every domain we have is because that solution despite being sucky at an individual level scales for a bheed.
How does one scale creative cognition and higher order thinking across a bheed, what sort of cognitive commons can we make that a bheed can draw from that shifts our baseline ways of knowing, thinking
But the world — schools, apps, deadlines, interfaces — punish slowness.
Meetings move on before you speak. Notes vanish before they connect.
Most digital tools are made for speed, for output. Not reflection. Not ambiguity. Not neurodivergent depth.
Most people don’t lack ideas. They lack space to let them breathe. You’re not bad at thinking. You’re using tools that make reflection feel like a flaw.
I connected with a therapist two months ago when I was on the verge of giving up because of career decisions that makes me feel unemployable (feel less so today compared to at that time). Therapist's response to my narration was basically : sorry can't help you
@skinnylatte licensed therapists are also no panacea though, especially for depression related to career related fuck ups and decisions they can be useless
Mental health apps should be connected with career counsellors and creative problem solvers — with entrepreneurs, with career transitioners people who took extreme risks in life, faced hopeless situations, survived and now thrive
Hey Tim @tchambers a member of your instance is doing a targeted harassment for a post that mentioned twitter link to a video drawing parallels between zionism and nazism.
At no point in the video there is mention of what the member of your instance claims "Holocaust revisionism"
The video acknowledges Holocaust and after that draws parallels, citing quotes from the founders of the zionist movement and Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé
Diamond Dealer | Trying to break in UX after decade-long indie research: HCI, IxD, Design Theory, Phil of Tech, Feminist Theory, STS, Media Theory, Pedagogy