TechComedyLife VIJEV

What will it take for us to co-exist as a human species where we work together, celebrate our differences, and help humanity realize we are stronger when we leverage our asymmetrical cultures, views, skills, and methods to help build our society?
When did it become about us vs them? How did we start separating our “humanness” with artificial values, borders, ideologies and heritage that our humans created thousands of years ago?
They were created to help us survive when our species lived in brutal times when survival was the only priority. We are no longer in those times but living in the fallout of a post-atomic radioactive culture still lingering on where humans cling to as a source of familiarity. Our autonomic habits will always find solace in the familiar when we are cornered or pushed to our limits. At least it's the world we imagine and yet not the reality today. The fear of being “eradicated” is a trauma response that overrides all common sense and does not allow any room for compassion or logical reasoning.
The adage of extreme survival is to either eat or be eaten.

How do we help humanity imagine a society where we can look beyond our selfish needs and desires as our driving force to survive? A drive that has blinded us to the fact that we are thriving but instead spend our energies looking over our shoulders in a constant tortured state.
Is it that we don't trust anyone? Or perhaps we don’t trust ourselves?
I envision a world where the best of our minds from around the world and every human being can live a life that makes it amazing just to be human. A society that values life for simply being us not measured by our incessant need to externally validate our existence separated by our artificially constructed values. It's this world where one is “rated” higher because of skin colour, nationality, culture, power, and material accumulation.
What will it take?
I don't have the answer. I even asked ChatGPT if would assist me with such a complex problem. This is the set of answers it gave me:
* Education and Awareness: Promoting education that emphasizes critical thinking, empathy, and understanding of different cultures can help break down barriers. Education systems that include global history, cultural studies, and languages can foster a sense of shared humanity.
* Communication and Dialogue: Encouraging open dialogue between different groups, fostering intercultural communication, and creating platforms for exchange can help people understand and appreciate their differences.
* Economic Systems Rethink: Considering alternative economic models prioritising well-being and sustainability over profit, such as the doughnut economic model or cooperative business structures, could shift the focus from money to quality of life.
* Collaborative Governance: Developing international institutions and agreements that promote cooperation over competition could lead to more collective problem-solving and shared progress.
* Technology and Innovation: Leveraging technology to solve global challenges and to facilitate collaboration across borders can help unite people towards common goals.
* Celebrating Diversity: Creating spaces and opportunities to celebrate different cultures and perspectives can help build mutual respect and appreciation.
* Shared Goals and Challenges: Recognizing and acting on global challenges that affect all humans, like climate change, can create a sense of unity and common purpose.
* Empathy and Compassion: Cultivating empathy through storytelling, media, and personal connections can help people see the world from others' perspectives.
* Leadership and Role Models: Leaders who embody and promote inclusive and collaborative values can inspire others to follow suit.
* Policy and Institutional Change: Implementing policies that promote equity and justice, and reforming institutions to be more inclusive and representative, can help level the playing field.
* Global Citizenship: Encouraging

Are you ambitious? It's the dream we have of having a better more fulfilling life. The innate drive to create and do things beyond the norm. It pulls us out of our comfort complacent zone into a zone of achievement. It's also our collective drive to build and create new things that propel us due to necessity.
We, unfortunately, took it too far. We did it to protect ourselves and were motivated by our need to survive at the expense of being human.
We don’t need to dial it up to 11 for everything. With due respect to Spinal Tap. We are pushing harder, every day. For a goal with a void. An endless end. We constantly do… produce… accumulate. Productivity has never been higher.
We now have AI developed to automate and increase our productivity even more to such a point humans will not be needed at all. What should we be doing if the robots do everything?
Our fear of AI has not stemmed from the potential to replace human jobs. It is instead making us look at ourselves for having jobs that robots can easily replace. It's making us question what we CAN do with our lives. Something AI would never do. The human experience.
What is the point of it all?
Our sense of value has been hijacked by a system that assesses, grows, and rewards production and material accumulation. We have systematically externalized our value in the physical world. The result - even humans are too slow to meet the demands of “growth”.
We have experienced this in the past and are still living in the perilous pursuit of external validation.
Having ambition is amazing. However, we forget that love, peace, and joy are also ambitions. Ambition doesn't mean hard suffering towards a goal in the hopes the end will be more rewarding when you realize there is no end. There is only now. We are awakening to find a journey where ambition can be a rewarding joyous experience carrying you towards your ambition. Take the longer slower path, enjoy the view, and you will get there. We can live in a joyful world that is built toward the human experience.
Old definition of ambition: DOing with external validation, producing as much as possible regardless of love, peace, or joy.
* Optimized for profit as it’s often the major motivation.
* Shortest cut to wealth.
* Harmful to the planet, health, and our sense of living.
New definition of ambition: BEing with internal value centered on the human experience. Living the good life that benefits all of humanity.
* People, organizations, and even companies driven by sustainable harmonious, and joyful living. Companies can STILL be profitable!
* Scenic route to wealth.
* Sustainable planet.
What’s the rush anyway?
Note: I created the audio transcription for this post with ElevenLabs using a deep British voice. What do you think of the AI audio that was generated for this post?


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit techcomedylife.vijev.com

I'm a mind surfer. I ride the waves, exploring the vastness of the human universe, diving into the joy and sorrow each experience brings, uncovering hidden treasures sunk beneath my subconscious, ignored previously by my own choices in the pursuit of survival, false admiration, and shallow wealth.
These experiences have moulded and directed me toward a newfound state of being. To delve within me, to unearth the true wealth lying dormant, neglected, and lying below in the deep by an environment that regarded human creativity as an inconvenience and a nuisance, that didn’t fit in with the goals of a society that quantified and qualified our existence based on our ability to produce and accumulate.
I don’t know, what I don’t know.
My instincts, which I often do not listen to, would correctly illuminate the unknown paths before me but I just refused to see it.
My instincts are strong. I would fight it at every step as I stubbornly built myself an artificial current designed on the opinion of others and fought against the vast pressure of the ocean. My mind would eventually give in, almost drowning in my own thoughts.
My instincts were forgiving enough to help me acknowledge and disrupt my facade and helped me paddle away from the old version, towards a world with no name nor destination. It is me being me, discovering the enigma within with no preconceived prejudices or ideologies of what I “should” be.
I thus become what I am through pain, helping me feel out my soul like a tugboat, bump after bump, guiding me towards the natural path filled with meandering dimensional states of being. I then learn from the bumps, harnessing my instincts in full flow, adjusting and transforming along the way.
I find myself experiencing life as a mind surfer, trusting myself, guided and powered by the waves, wave after wave, without trying to change the ocean.
Destination Unknown.

Note: I created the audio transcription for this post with ElevenLabs. What do you think of the AI audio that was generated for this post?


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit techcomedylife.vijev.com

Before you chase me with your oil lamps, paraffin lighters, and acid from your backup batteries, hear me out. VIJEV here being a bit more serious for this piece.
South Africa is a relatively young democracy having to create its own path and way while it was already on the back foot long before we had our general election. The ANC is known for their struggle in changing our landscape from the old to the new but the leaders that once were are long gone and the ones that are still alive are indeed ageing faster than your prized Gorgonzola. Their style of thinking and application no longer applies. Compounding this they are resting on their laurels of fighting for freedom and thus have the permission to do whatever they like. They can do no wrong. They simply do not understand their place anymore. They don't even acknowledge it.
If you believe South Africa is leaderless then you need to be that leader. You need to be the person that is missing in this world.

That being said, trying to fix or increase our electricity isn’t the issue. Otherwise, it would have been fixed years ago. There’s a bigger issue at play.
The best analogy is of a drowning child. You can do all you want… try to feed the child, educate, and care for it but as long as it’s still drowning, it’s a lost cause. It’s even worse when the child doesn’t even know it’s drowning. There’s simply no awareness.
So we need to put aside our incessant need to fix what is already broken from a legacy era that was created for the few and do something that is much more profound…
ACCEPTANCE.

This means to first acknowledge that the child is indeed drowning - pull the child out of the water and THEN we can decide how to rehabilitate, grow and nurture.
What does this mean in the real world? It means to accept our shadows of the past as part of who we are, forgive and make peace with the past. It’s our own shadows as well that we need to accept. The versions of us that are still living in the past as a form of survival. If all we do is survive, we will never be able to thrive.
There’s no peace if we cannot heal first. Right now South Africa is circling in trauma and blame, depending on your background/age/political leanings:
* It’s apartheid’s fault or colonialism or more recently Jan van Riebeeck because he arrived on the shores of South Africa in 1652 causing all the damage we have today and are waiting for the beneficiaries of the descendants to give it all up to others so people can move on. OR
* It’s the new government / ANC / African’s fault because they are corrupt and don’t care about governance nor the competence to do anything properly, i.e. “mismanagement of funds” as we often see in the news. They are completely to blame for the decade-long loadshedding South Africa is now experiencing.
No one is taking responsibility for it now. In order to get past all of this, we need to accept where we are in life, history, and our circumstances. Everyone is now just a victim.
I don’t know which one is worse… The ones that leave the country and complain to others or the ones that are still living in South Africa complaining and unable to get out.

Why would you want it to fail? What are you trying to prove? That you’re right? That everything is going to capitulate? South Africa has been deemed a failed state since the 1990s. If you believe in failure, then it will become true. What you say will become true.
We have been trying to fix an old system that was designed to be exclusive and cannot be changed, at least not fast and cost-effectively, to be inclusive for all South Africans. We have been holding on for so long. This is a legacy system that was built by the old regime that no longer cares about the future and welfare of South Africans. They have mostly left and worst of all, very often, spew hatred about the current state of the country. South Africans need to let go of the idea of what South Africa was or “should be”, espec

This is VIJEV and let’s talk about storytelling. I’ve been learning how to use AI for storytelling, including trying out ChatGPT and even Notion AI to assist with creative writing. I’ve created a story with my own plot, characters and twists. I then asked AI to help rewrite some of the sentences to be more coherent and of course with better grammar. I then took the story and fed it with ChatGPT again to create a narrative that had a bit more sarcastic humour to suit the style of a noir detective story set in a sci-fi world. Imagine that I baked the cake and the AI helped with the icing. Here it begins.
Synthetic Murder
It was a dark and stormy night. Yours truly, Detective Vaj Appan, playing gumshoe in the city that never sleeps, because really, who could sleep with all these factories running? The city is Amartek, 2049 AD. A Tuesday, 6pm. At least the nightlife was consistent, if you're into the whole burnt oil from the East and charred masala from the West kind of vibe. And let me tell you, folks, this metaphor for my life couldn't have been more original. My duality: half-man, half-cybernetic, all-confusion.
Now gather 'round, kiddos, because I'm going to share the thrilling tale of that one fateful call that changed my life forever. I mean, really, how could it not? It was the warehouse factory, where they discovered a human supervisor, deader than disco, murdered by an automaton. Unthinkable! It was like one of those cheesy B-movies that nobody watches.
But here's the kicker: with a gaggle of detectives available in the area, who do they assign the case to? Yours truly, Detective Vaj "I-Swear-I-Know-What-I'm-Doing" Appan. Because this was one of those sensitive cases, and they needed someone who could straddle both worlds. So who better than the guy who has electronic spare parts to make me whole?
Ah, yes, the automatons. Or robots, or AI, or "mechanical overlords," or “job stealers” or whatever the kids are calling them these days. They were our trusty, efficient workers who put us, humans, out of business. No incidents for years, and then suddenly, a bump in the night. I was stumped, flummoxed even. Was it an accidental glitch, or was someone pulling the robotic strings? This city hadn't been shaken like this since Windows 3.1 came out, and that's ancient history, my friends.
So there I was, stepping into the dilapidated warehouse factory like I owned the place. The first thing to assault my senses was the charming aroma of rusted metal and oil, a real olfactory treat. The once silent machines were now whirring so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think. So, with grim determination, I made my way to the late human supervisor's office, the door stubbornly locked from the inside. But never fear, for Detective Vaj "Who-Needs-A-Warrant" Appan used a key, a true testament to my detective prowess.
As I entered, I was struck by the tidiness of the office, a stark contrast to the chaotic factory floor. Everything had its place, except for the corpse sprawled on the floor. That's our dearly departed supervisor, alright. Upon close examination, it was obvious he'd been strangled to death. It all seemed too personal, like a high-stakes game of robotic Twister gone wrong. The automaton's muscular arm was covered in human blood, with clear signs of a struggle. Reliable machines, huh? Colour me unsettled.
Well, well, wasn't this a riveting mystery straight out of a pulp fiction novel? So there I was, knee-deep in this case, sauntering out of that factory with all the ambience of a robotic assembly line, and boy was the city skyline a painter's cliché: orange and red as a digital firestorm. Time to hit up the supervisor's stomping ground – The Binary & Biryani, where your meal came in two modes: hot or not.
As I strutted into the joint, the spice factor sucker-punched my nostrils like a prizefighter, taking me down memory lane where lactose-free yoghurt offered me cool reprieve. Mrs Kamala, the owner, waved me ove

It's VIJEV, and April has brought a refreshing coolness to the Southern Hemisphere. What better time to discuss self-reflection? Despite our relentless pursuit to uncover the world's mysteries, we often neglect the most crucial mystery of all – discovering ourselves. This unexplored territory holds the key to our identity.
In this video, I speak to Deepak John and Naledi King about discovering ourselves and using the tools available to understand it, and we go through their methodologies of uncovering problems in our lives. You then find the connection that reveals who you need to be and let go of the idea of what you thought you needed to be.
From birth, we absorb knowledge from our surroundings, and with our instincts, we craft a vision of the life we aspire to live. However, external factors beyond our control sometimes impose an alternative path. War, family, toxic friendships, societal pressures, and work are just a few examples of circumstances that may divert us from our potential.
It's only upon recognizing that we are in "survival mode" rather than "discovery mode", that we can shift our perspective. We have followed the lessons we've been taught, so we must forgive ourselves for not knowing better and for those around us who meant well but didn’t know either. Indeed, it is through adversity and pain that we ultimately awaken to our true selves.
What is the authentic self?
It is an unknown and mysterious part of discovering the self. There is no destination, merely an experience as you unpack the gift in front of you as you await your surprise. The authentic self is your real you. The one that no one else can find, except you. You can only find it when it's forged with your courage and painfully acknowledged and understood.
We need a way to know the where and why. We don’t need “the what” for now.
It’s like being an archaeologist. You dig and reveal the bones underneath. You may not even know what the bones look like. What you know as an authentic person is… the bones are there.
To look is to take a set of actions to understand where you are currently.
Your Awareness - Do you really know where you are? The pain indicates how far you are straying from your true self. This is the analogy of drowning. You may be drowning, and your instinct is to thrash at the water. You can’t understand why it’s not working. The worst of all… you are not **aware** that you are drowning. The best remedy is to follow these 2 areas to uncover your pain and understand why you are drowning.
1.      The world you see, is who you are. If you are loving, you will see loving people. If you are hateful, you will see hate. See what you are really seeing in the world.
2.      Look directly and acknowledge the way you react to your triggers. What makes you angry? Sad. Shame. Frustration. Understand and study it head-on. What makes you anxious about the past or the future all the time? If you are not in the present, you will not be able to solve the problems you really have. Coming to terms with it is the best way to find your present self.
Once you build the basic awareness, you begin to realize that it is only YOU who can fix it. This is where you take responsibility for your life and actions. Then you can start working on the framework to build up your life.
1.      Physical - Do physical things to move your body that gets your blood flowing. Even better, doing something you enjoy that moves your body. For me, it’s strength/weight training. This form of exercise has allowed me to become fitter and physically stronger. A strong body provides the framework for the next important part. Your mind.
2.      Mental / Emotional - These are exercises to get your mind fit. It can be in the form of meditation or breathing exercises that helps your mind disconnect when necessary and help you focus on what’s important. It can also be a form of connection where you can enjoy the company of the people you love, spen