We sat in a modest guest house beside one of the oldest fishing villages on Sri Lanka’s west coast—where the centuries-old practice of drying fish in the open air continues to this day. Much like the mangroves that shield the land from surging waves, Harinda described a human scaffolding of compassion—one that could very well become the social fabric we need in the times ahead.
Faheem: At 3rd-Space we’ve examined how systems obsessed with optimisation and efficiency often drive unintended negative consequences. When I heard about your project and we started talking a few months ago, I was very drawn to your vision of volunteerism and human connection as antidotes to the productivity trap. We have been tracking similar people such as Phoebe Tickell, who highlights the need for rethinking societal structures, a theme that ran through some of our conversations. So, I thought it would be great to talk further and get a deeper sense of the background to your ideas, and how they can be made manifest.
Harinda: Thank you for this opportunity. Ever since I can remember, I’ve had this sense of duty to do something good for my community, for my country. I don’t know how or when it started. I’m a Buddhist, so maybe I brought it from my previous life. What I do know, is that I’ve had this burning feeling that I need to give back, and it’s been a process of trying to figure out how best to give back and looking into what it means to do this in a way that I am not causing more problems, but where it alleviates pain and suffering. If you look at it through a Buddhist lens, Buddha said that all life is suffering, right, and the whole point of his Enlightenment is to move out of suffering, which is to achieve [Ana] Nirvana. I think in my own way I’m creating tools to help reduce suffering at scale.
I am a Buddhist, as I mentioned, so if we were to explore that path of a so-called spiritual living, of trying to be a more holistic human being, how this was practiced in the past would have meant needing to have the right conditions. Those conditions are difficult these days, and even if this were possible, it’s probably very rare to want to live such a life. I don’t believe that most people can meditate in the middle of a war, or during a massive famine. So, for most it’s not possible to have the ‘right’ conditions to achieve that Enlightenment. So, my approach is more of a roundabout way. I consider it important to do the best that we can, and to look to the future.
We need to preserve the conditions for future generations. Like maintaining a good cricket pitch, [laughs]. I’m just back after a big cricket match! Our ancestors did their best to preserve some of the natural order. Some ancestors however, also decided there were different ways of exploiting the natural order and enjoying short-term gains. This gave them a huge amount of power, specifically the military power to colonise. Of course, this was an incomplete worldview which has led us to this place now. And we need an alternative.
I’ve been trying to find myself within this whole journey. and I found myself while serving others. To cut a long story short, when I was in Canada, I worked in a hospital and that’s where I realised that I felt alive when I was helping people. I moved back home to Sri Lanka with the intention of giving back to my country.
The Productivity Trap
Faheem: When we first met, we spoke a lot about the productivity mindset—about neoliberalism, capitalism, etc, which we don’t need to dive into now—but you had some really interesting reflections on productivity itself.
Harinda: I think “productivity” is one of those words that everyone uses, but very few people stop to define. It means different things to different people. I was once invited to speak at a large corporate event in Sri Lanka, and during my talk, I said something that surprised the room: Productivity can actually be an obstacle to compassion. It can get in the way of our humanity. Before explaining what I meant, I asked the audience, “Can anyone tell me what productivity really means to you?”. There were about 60 or 70 people there, including the head of HR. And no one could give a clear answer. It was a bit of an eye-opener—people said things like “doing things well,” or “doing things efficiently,” but even those answers varied.
So, then I asked, well, what if doing something well actually made it less efficient? What if taking the time to be thoughtful and careful meant you couldn’t go as fast? The head of HR responded with, “Well, it’s about doing things right.” And I had to ask, but what does “right” mean?
Because whether we like it or not, in most workplaces, being “productive” usually means one thing: doing what you were doing before, but faster—and cheaper. That’s the industrial mindset. Efficiency at all costs.
So, if you’re not delivering the same output more quickly, or at a lower cost, suddenly you’re seen as ‘unproductive’. And that becomes a problem.
I think that business leaders are waiting for AI to flourish because AI will be able to do all of that stuff ‘efficiently’. And I think to myself, is that a world that we want to live in? Because compassion takes time. It’s mutual. It’s reciprocal. You can’t automate that.
Faheem: I think this speaks to the deep assumption we have adopted without even knowing it – how we assign value to people. It feels like the worth of a human being—regardless of age, race, background—is being measured through that same lens of efficiency and output.
Harinda: Yes. And I think this obsession of measuring everything is then going to be viewed through the lens of productivity. I’ve heard about the new blue green economy, trying to have green bonds, trying to measure the effectiveness or efficiency of a tree, or forest, etc. The insanity of it is that we are trying to measure the productivity of living organisms based on timelines that we have artificially imposed. Maybe if you look at a mini forest, for, let’s say a hundred years, maybe in the long run it is very productive. But if you look at it for six months, it’s not,
Faheem: Well, it most definitely wouldn’t be from an extractivism point of view.
Harinda: We are still, as a civilisation, like children—with enormous power but limited wisdom. I also think that many people are forced to view the world through the MBA lens—where everything is viewed through financialisation and process improvement. These are hangovers from the industrial mindset. I’m not anti-industrialisation. It served its purpose. But it can’t be the only framework we use. The pace of change is so rapid, we don’t have time to sit around the fire and really deliberate. So people fall back on what they know: codifying, systemising, adding friction, then rewarding or penalising behaviour. That’s the logic of bureaucracy. It helped civilisation for 500–600 years, but if you follow that logic to its end, everything gets outsourced to AI—because it’ll do it all faster. That’s the danger: productivity becomes the only lens, and suddenly humans are seen as inefficient. Compassion, care, volunteering—those things can’t be systemised. And they get crowded out.
Returning to Sri Lanka
Harinda: I came back to Sri Lanka with this grand ambition of giving back, with maybe a saviour mindset. But then I realised that people didn’t know what I have been doing for the last 10 years. They weren’t aware of the valuable experiences I had gained working in a hospital for seven years dealing with mental health patients, a 42 bed inpatient unit, and dealing with families with dying relatives, who wanted to kill the doctors when they said that they had to remove the life support. I’ve been in so many situations where I felt my knowledge and skills were useful, and I wanted to share them. So, I tried to volunteer. This was difficult. So, I thought, okay, why not create my own platform, where I would create an environment where organisations can post their volunteer requirements. Then individuals like me, who are interested in giving back to the society, can get involved.
Faheem: You spoke about volunteering, and it sounds very natural to you, but many people wouldn’t have that as their first choice. Can you just expand on the role of volunteering in the context of Sri Lanka?
Harinda: In Sri Lanka, generally people volunteer through Buddhist temples, Hindu kovils, churches, or mosques. Through religious institutions. When it comes to Buddhist culture, in my experience it’s more transactional. People want to do good so that they can obtain good merit, hoping for a better future. This is usually about material things – a better job, or a better house, or more money, or whatever the status. There are also a lot of students volunteering through different clubs and societies.
There are many retired people who volunteer too; often with children, cancer patients, and animal rescue. Working professionals tend to volunteer through social clubs and it’s usually project based. Most of the volunteering activities happening are disjointed and this sometimes slightly undermines the activity itself. For example, there could be a group that’s doing a beach cleanup, but they have printed new t-shirts with the event name and year, distributed to the volunteers with single-use plastic packaging, and that’s adding to the garbage that they are cleaning up that day.
So, I’ve tried my best in many ways to gently nudge people towards doing good responsibly, and trying to close these gaps. Let’s act in a coherent way, where actions complement each other.
gudppl: Technology for the Soul
Harinda: In Sri Lanka, there’s a concept called Pin Potha. Pin Potha means ‘book of good merits’. In Buddhist culture you are encouraged to have a book to write down the good you have done. So, if you are feeling low, you can reflect on this and then build upon it. If you don’t have a record of where you have come from, you don’t know whether you’re going in the right direction or not. So, in one sense the app is a digital version of Pin Potha, allowing anyone in the world to have a record of the good they have done, and get it verified from the organisation that they volunteered for.
My ideal goal would be 25% of our population, or 25% of our community, volunteer at least once a week. Because research shows that that’s a tipping point. So, if we can get, let’s say 25% of a school, or a corporation, or a city, or a nation, volunteering on a weekly basis; and this can be volunteering at an animal shelter, or beach cleanups, or planting trees, or taking care of the elderly, or whatever it is, it’ll create that ripple effect.
Faheem: The digital age and the attention economy have had some surprising positive and negative impacts. How have you thought about this, when deciding to make gudppl into an app?
Harinda: I’ve thought about this long and hard, and it’s one of the main reasons why I’ve had many delays. I could have taken the easy way out, for example partner up with a big multinational company and say, “Okay, give us coupons for every five volunteer hours. You get a discount to purchase this.” Add a reward system. Increase material consumerism. I could’ve done that. I would’ve made a lot of money by now if I went down that path.
But I explore these ideas in my head and try to think about the second-order effects, the third-order effects of what I am doing. I’m not saying I’ve figured it out perfectly, but I am trying to. I ‘red team’ my ideas all the time.
Faheem: What do you mean by “red team”?
Harinda: Red teaming is basically something companies like Microsoft, or other big IT companies do. They build a system, then appoint a group of hackers—call them the red team—and get them to try and hack into the system. Try to find the loopholes. So, in my case, I try to find loopholes in my own thinking. I’m blessed with a lovely, intelligent wife who asks really tough questions. “If you do this, is it going outside of your values?” We have these conversations.
I’m also surrounded by some well-grounded, humble friends who ask tough questions too. That helps me stay true to my vision, which is to bring people together to do good—and not be dependent on technology to give us meaning. I’ve told this to the tech developers too. If the magic happens, it should happen outside of the app. The magic happens in the community, when they’re volunteering, when they are with each other. I do not want to replace that with micro dopamine hits through the app.
Faheem: Given the post-war context here in Sri Lanka, is there anything that you’ve discovered, or thought about, in terms of volunteering in relation to rebuilding bridges?
Harinda: A hundred percent! I have come to realise the essence of being a human is serving others voluntarily. 2000 years ago Aristotle said the same thing, right? So many wise philosophers have said similar things. I genuinely believe that the antidote to the illnesses that we are seeing in the world is volunteering. Because if you are able to voluntarily give your time, give your compassion, give your love and attention to others, you are not only practicing your empathy muscle and your compassion muscle, but you are also telling the other person that I trust you. I care for you and have faith in humanity. We have heard that humans are social animals. So, what better way to show that than volunteering?
I think about healing the wounds caused during the war, and one of the best ways to heal is having people from all corners of the country volunteering. This is one of the first benefits I focused on when I started gudppl. and I said, you know, imagine a day when people from the north come to the south to volunteer, and people from the west go to the east to volunteer, and vice versa. When we volunteer in all these different combinations, it means we learn more about each other as human beings.
The Four Immeasurables
Harinda: Right now, the entire human civilisation is being asked to work towards improving and growing three specific metrics. One is GDP. One is per capita income nationwide. And one is the stock markets. All are incomplete metrics, right? And there are ways of getting around them and cheating. right? So, they are obviously not an indication of how well your civilisation, your community, your nation is doing. So, then we have to look at ways of how we can find holistic metrics, and while the happiness index is one, again, it has its own set of shortcomings.
In Buddhism there’s something called the four Immeasurables, which are: Metta, Karuna, Mudita and Upekkha. They are depicted on our Sri Lankan flag as four Bo-leaves.
Metta means loving kindness.
Mudita means sympathetic joy, or compassion. The opposite word of Mudita in German is Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude means getting pleasure out of somebody else’s misfortune. This is what we are seeing on social media. We need to have less of that and more of Mudita.
The fourth one is Upekkha, which is equanimity, the wisdom of neither extreme highs nor extreme lows, like a wise old person who has experienced life, right? Ancient wisdom says that we cannot measure these four. That’s why they are called the Immeasurables!
My thing is, through volunteering how can we encourage these types of qualities? How can we encourage people to practice Mudita? Based on voluntary activities, we encourage people to appreciate the intrinsic value over the extrinsic values. That is long lasting. If people are getting joy and those dopamine hits from the intrinsic values, then the likelihood of them trying to overshoot our planetary boundaries would be far less.
That’s my thesis.
Faheem: Beautiful!
The loneliness epidemic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ogUIXb1sms
gudppl volunteer management https://app.gudppl.com/
One Response
I found lots of beauty in the dialogue and some questions arise.
“Red teaming ……call them the red team—and get them to try and hack into the system. Try to find the loopholes. So, in my case, I try to find loopholes in my own thinking. I’m blessed with a lovely, intelligent wife who asks really tough questions. “If you do this, is it going outside of your values?” We have these conversations.” Lucky man! Super.. 🙂
What we often call “productivity” is that the problem? when we aim for a specific kind of output. Likewise, what we call “compassion” is being open, receptive, and attuned to the presence of others. Do these need to be inherently at odds with the other? or is it not more to do with who we become, through different modes of engagement..