The Two Shortcuts

When building agency feels impossible, we look for shortcuts to feel something similar.

Long Degeneracy: The Casino as a Sanctuary

When you feel obsolete and powerless, "slow and steady" feels like a scam. If you can't build a career because of AI, and you can't build a life because of housing costs, you stop trying to climb. You start trying to jump.

You turn to Variance.

The logic: One big score changes everything. One lucky trade and you're free. The math doesn't matter. The feeling of agency does.

That explains the explosion in gambling, betting, F&O trading, etc. This isn't greed but a desperate attempt to feel in control.

The Casino is the only place left where a young person feels like a protagonist. Till the moment the wheel is spinning, they are a Cause, not an Effect.

Long God: The Fortress of Solitude

If "Long Degeneracy" seeks to overcome fear through high-risk action, "Long God" seeks to overcome it through high-level detachment.

We are seeing a massive boom in "spiritual" and wellness practices, with 65-77% of Gen Z now identifying as "spiritual".

This is the strategy of Surrender.

The logic: If I can't control outcomes, I'll control my need for outcomes. I'll declare myself above the game.

What it offers: Identity protection as detachment becomes an achievement.

What it costs: If you're using meditation to build capacity for difficult work - to sit with discomfort, to clarify direction - that's genuine practice. But if "I'm above material success" really means "I'm afraid to try and fail publicly," you're not self-actualising. You're spiritually bypassing.

The monastery lets you feel like you've transcended the need to become what you're capable of becoming, without doing the terrifying work of forging your path.

The Mirror Image

The casino says: "I can't build real agency, so I'll simulate control through variance."

The monastery says: "I can't build real agency, so I'll claim I've transcended needing it."

Both protect you from the biological imperative: What you can be, you must be.

The Hard Path

In the ancient texts I was studying, there is a concept that predates Maslow by a few thousand years: Swadharma. It is the specific, messy, difficult path that is unique to you. The texts contain a harsh warning: It is better to die in your own Swadharma than to do another’s well.

Here's what stops you: Comfort.

The casino is comfortable because variance creates stimulation without sustained effort.

The monastery is comfortable because detachment provides identity without public risk.

Both let you avoid crossing what I call the Low Status Moat - the valley where your competence drops and your status disappears as you move from one domain to another.

The moat is where agency gets built, and crossing the moat requires three things most people won't do:

Reclaiming Autonomy:

Your svadharma has no external scorecard. You must choose your direction knowing you might choose wrong.

You must sit with uncertainty long enough to figure out what YOU actually want - not what you think you should want.

The discomfort: Taking responsibility for outcomes.

The requirement: Choose anyway. Accept that clarity comes from commitment, not before it.

Reclaiming Competence:

Your svadharma requires building capability in areas where you start incompetent. You must do repetitive, unglamorous work. Get real feedback. Improve systematically. Build over years, not weeks. Accept that AI might make your skill obsolete and build it anyway because the building itself changes you.

The discomfort: Low status. Looking like a beginner when you used to be an expert.

The requirement: Build anyway. Master something because it's yours to master, not because it's guaranteed to pay off. Trust that your talent stack compounds even when specific skills don't.

Reclaiming Relatedness:

Your svadharma requires showing up as yourself. Not the curated version. You must risk vulnerability. Have real conversations. Accept that some people will reject the real you.

The discomfort: Vulnerability. Real conversations. Genuine presence. The possibility of rejection.

The requirement: Show up anyway. Risk rejection to build genuine belonging. Accept that one real connection matters more than a thousand curated impressions.

Swadharma is the only thing that actually fills the hollowness. It is the realisation that you are not here to be entertained (Degeneracy) or to be at peace (God).

You are here ‘because what you can be, you must be’.

Why I'm in Bombay Writing

People ask why I'm in a cramped Bombay apartment writing essays instead of partying in Ibiza or doing beach yoga in Goa.

The exit felt empty the moment it arrived because my self-worth was completely fused with the company's valuation. I'd been chasing external validation - VCs' scorecards, unicorn metrics, someone else's definition of success.

Finishing my yoga practice with a G-shot Americano, watching people (including myself) perform enlightenment for Instagram, I realised I was doing the same thing with different vocabulary. Still seeking external validation. Still running from the question: What is MY dharma?

Writing is my attempt at the terrifying middle path. About the discomfort of not knowing. The discomfort of building without external validation. The discomfort of showing up as myself, not my curated version.

I avoid the casino impulse, like calling for checking analytics, or refreshing LinkedIn to check validation, and I also avoid the monastery impulse of telling myself, "I'm above needing validation."

The test is to sit with both impulses without acting on them.

This isn't because writing is my "calling" or my "passion." I don't know if it is. But it's the clearest expression of my svadharma I can identify right now: Making sense of what I'm seeing. Sharing it publicly. Building capacity to sit with uncertainty.  Doing this work, whether or not it produces the fruits I want.

Not because I've arrived. But because… this is what I can be, so this is what I must be.

Conclusion: "I am Long Both, But I Choose Neither"

The "Escapism Economy" is the safest bet of the decade because biology favours comfort. As an investor, I am both Long Degeneracy and Long God, betting on the split between the two, because the casinos will get fuller and the ashrams will get more expensive. But as a human being, I am shorting them both because I choose the messiness of my Swadharma.

The world will pay any price to avoid this messiness, but you can start today by simply doing the one piece of work you are afraid to show.

Because… what you can be, you must be.