Why I am changing my name

Today is German Unity Day and I have an odd personal decision to announce:

I will be changing my last name from Fuloria to Human.

Before you think I've lost my marbles, please give me a chance to explain how I got here.

I turned 50 this year. I spent many months pondering how I could best leverage my remaining time. I concluded that humankind is most at risk from identity-based divisions, hatreds and conflicts. Actually, I concluded that this is the biggest threat to the safety, happiness and well-being of my children through their lifetimes.

Europe is racked by a atavistic, immoral and bloody war based on ethnic identity. The possible use of nuclear weapons is being seriously discussed. Not just in Europe: rising nationalism is re-kindling dormant conflicts elsewhere, most notably between China vs. Taiwan and India vs. China. The United Nations, set up in a more optimistic moment, has virtually no influence on international conflicts. Its soaring ideals have been drubbed resoundingly by realpolitik driven by national identities, again and again and again.

You agree, right?

Then, in the developing world, there’s identity-based civil war in many countries like Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria, gladly stoked by foreign powers. At least a dozen other countries are paralyzed by fundamentalist or state violence. 

But even within richer, democratic nations, where things should be better, furiously-held political identities are driving intra-national bitterness and intolerance. Militant, radical movements are gaining adherents. Hate for other nations or religions or ethnicities or political parties is easy to market and wins eyeballs and votes. Leaders, intoxicated with the power of digital media, are ready to take provocation and anger to the very edge. 

As Ezra Klein points out in his excellent book, "Why We're Polarized", some of the systemic checks and behavioral norms against polarization have disappeared in the last few decades, while propaganda, fake news and echo chambers have grown more effective with technology. Who cares what precious civilizational assets, painstakingly crafted over centuries, are lost in the process? The misguided storming of the US Capitol building, the seat of US democracy, is emblematic of our polarized times.

And all this while, our little planet is overheating, the glaciers are melting, and the sea-levels are rising. The weather is getting more extreme, and the biosphere is sliding into catastrophe. We are distracted by our conflicts and our resources are devoted to supporting conflict. We don't have the trust among countries that is required to solve for global warming at the planetary level. Oh, and we are firing up coal plants, because natural gas supplies are threatened by the war. It would all be darkly comic if it weren't true.

Still with me?

That's why I think our most important marketing challenge is not about persuading someone to buy into a particular automobile brand or brand of fizzy drink... or brand of technology services :-) Our most important marketing challenge is to persuade the world that we are human first, and that in the long run this approach will bring us and our children peace and joy.

And that's why I am, perhaps quixotically, changing my name. To push my religious, national and regional identities forever into the background, with the hope that some others might be encouraged to do the same. Trying to "be the change" I want to see in the world.

Make no mistake: I am giving up something that I have been in love with. I have loved the exoticness and rarity of Fuloria. I have loved that it belongs solely to a tiny, beautiful village in the Himalayas. Everyone who lives there is a Fuloria and everyone on the planet who is a Fuloria can trace their ancestry back to that little slice of paradise. I have signed Fuloria with a proud flourish for as long as I can remember, with a big loopy F just like my father has in his signature.

But I also see how this name imprisons me. There is always an unconscious or conscious bias attached to it. In India, we have a lot riding on the name, even with people who do not consciously want to discriminate. Fuloria, Gupta, Yadav, Mohammad or Varghese - all send out different signals.

And the same is true internationally - a Fuloria would get a different response than a Johannson, a Wang, a Federov, a Mwangi, or an Ibrahim.

You agree, right?

Even more, I must admit the connection I have with the name has some embarrassing aspects. We were a Brahmin village, so historically we are associated with an emphasis on learning and education. This connection with learning and education makes me proud but the caste aspect is simultaneously problematic. We are largely a gentle community but still have members who have sharp caste and religious prejudices. As India sees a "Hindutva" resurgence, some of these have surfaced in an ugly way.

Maybe, in some perfect world, we could see these last names as relics of an intriguing past, we could wear our historical identities lightly without using them to draw a line between ourselves and others. A little like we might cheer for a school sports team, without rancour, just having fun. But unfortunately, in the absence of global thought, these identities often become fissure lines of religion, caste and nationality. And our leaders are only too happy to ignite them and exploit them and profit off them. For example, even today, many local elections in India likely involve some "caste arithmetic", while national elections are likely swayed by heated religious topics. Other countries have similar identity-based election dynamics, I have observed.

In the 21st century, all this makes no sense, at least to me. My father studied in the USSR for some years, my mother was born in what is now Pakistan. I've lived some years in Arab Iraq and some years in Kurdish Iraq, in the US, in Europe, even in quite different parts of India. I've had the privilege to travel widely and work with people in over 30 countries. I have read a bit of history. I can say with confidence that humans are intrinsically pretty much the same all over the world. Most remarkably, I have often found someone in a remote country, with a very different upbringing, being more similar to me in mentality than my own siblings.

So when leaders are playing on our differences, my name change is to express my own experience and militate against these. 

Most importantly, the name will speak loudly even when I am silent. I will not need to speak up every time. Like many moderates, I have been pushed into relative silence. There was a time when I thought I could improve things with calm debate and logic and appeals for love and peace. I was wrong. To defend my opinions, I found myself becoming shrill and bitter too. It wasn't working. (No wonder many moderates eventually pick sides.)

Now, whether I speak or not, I want my name to shout, "Whatever other identities I may have, I am human first. I will see others too as human first. You can't shake this conviction of mine, it is now part of my inalienable identity."

And if given a chance to explain, I will add to that. "Being human first, and gradually dissolving the strong national or religious or ethnic identities, offers the best hope for humankind. We need superhuman clarity, resolve and cooperation to tackle our planet’s grave challenges. But to access that superhuman power that we have together as a species, we must resolve to be human first."

So that's why I am changing my name. As soon as I can figure out how it will all work with my company paperwork, passports, visas, ID cards, banks etc. The US visa is the biggest challenge, since the current wait for a visa interview is over a year. But everything will fall in place soon, I am sure, and I can officially have a new identity.

To end, a short anecdote:

This summer, we took our children, our girl aged 10 and our boy aged 13, to see the Berlin Wall Memorial. We showed them where once there were ditches and barbed wires and machine gun towers. This was the Todesstreifen, or "death strip". They saw the poignant Window of Remembrance memorial with the photos and stories of the many old and young people, men and women, even tragically little children, who had been shot at and killed just for trying to cross the wall.

Now on both sides there was a regular city, very quiet and commonplace, even a little boring. The two sets of people who had squared off against each other with killing on their minds were now just one people. And it was a beautiful summer day.

Walking back, my son said, "Papa, now I finally understand why you want to change your name".

Happy German Unity Day!