A question that confronted me today was whether I should just let go of things and 'move on' as if nothing ever happened. It made me think, and by the end of the day I figured out that the question is essentially one of rationality. There is a part of humans that is rational (economics?) and one that is irrational. The question is how much of a human is what. I would try to bring out certain inherent contradictions between rationality and irrationality through this piece.
A lesson that was learnt today, is that most people are inherently impatient. They will say that they will do something, pretend to persevere and ask 'what happened?'. But eventually, as the day gets long, most people are going to leave your room and move on. Some will come back only to show anger at how disgusting you've been. This is the human tendency to move to lighter situations and self-pity, that I had referenced yesterday. Staying true to the word is not going to be a stable equilibrium, because there is a strictly positive payoff to just forgetting about someone else's pain as if nothing ever happened. To stay put would, in fact, be irrational. In this case, the 'right' thing to do is thus irrational. Only those with an inhuman capacity to bear pain are going to be able to stay put in this sad, depressing environment.
Now returning to the point of 'moving on'. There is an aspect to decision making that is most rational and that we as humans often ignore. It is the idea of 'sunk cost'. We let history dictate our decisions - the ghosts of the past still abound in our present. A rational decision-maker would not consider sunk cost. But most of us do. This is another aspect in which we are all irrational. Or are we? Is history 'sunk'? In the sense that our present actions can't change it, it is. But in the sense that we might still be incurring certain pains because of it, it might. This is much like the concept of depreciation. As a fixed percentage of the capital good, depreciation is a cost incurred over several periods of time. Yes, it diminishes over time; but is is always present. Similarly, the one-off incident might have been a part of the past, but the memory stays. This is what makes us distinctively human, and this is what makes history so important.
In my case, I'm trying to be as rational as I can be. My decision to move on, or not to do so, would be dictated solely by whether the costs that I incur are sunk costs, or variable costs. If I see myself getting hurt in the near future because of the people with whom I want to give my friendship another try, it would be irrational of me to let bygones be bygones. There are certain actions, moments and images that remind one of a very painful past. Maybe this is why this 'moving on' is going to come far in the future, when adaptive memories ensure that the part that pains has been greatly diminished. Till then, I probably do not see myself moving on.
This might paint a very disillusioned portrait of human forgiveness. Maybe it isn't. Like all economic models, there are certain assumptions that lead to this conclusion. One is that there would not be a structural change that might lessen the intensity of the pain. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel, maybe there is hope that this 'moving on' will also include a change. Maybe there will be more humanity. Maybe ...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Of give and take
Over the past few days, I have incessantly thought about how some friendships have drained me. I once read the quotation that the most precious thing you can give to someone is time - because it is the most valuable thing in life, which can never be brought back. I added 'effort' to that combination, and have given it to the more precious of my friendships. At a time when many of them have gone bust, I have to question myself of what went wrong. Friendships should ideally be highly personal, not to be shared on blogs in any case. However, maybe there lies a lesson, or an error of judgement, that might be of some help to someone else in future.
I start this public soliloquy with a description of the pain. Sometimes the pain is so intense that it is hard to imagine that it isn't real, physical pain. The pain emerges out of nowhere, like an old friend; and I could place my bets that I feel the heart skip a few beats. The one thing I realise about the pain, and which I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life - is that it is always borne alone. No matter how much people around you say that they are there, there are functional barriers that prevent them from keeping their word. For one, they don't quite understand the pain. They will view the pain from the prism of their private experiences. Since no two humans' experiences are ever the same (injective functions?), hence no two evaluations will ever be the same. The words, no matter how sincere, will always ring hollow in the end. Secondly, humans by nature are not very sacrificing. It's almost a law of nature - wherever there is joy, happiness and smiling faces, the heart is drawn. Where there is pain, darkness and brooding, we seek to escape. I would be unfair to say that everyone is like that. I say again, sab aise hi hote hai, and that 'sab' means 'the majority', and not 'for all x'.
Another aspect of human behaviour that I was acquainted with is the level to which other humans matter. There are no dominant strategies in life, and hence the best responses change with the other players' actions. The dark, brooding variety moves from one shoulder to cry on, to another; in the endless hope that some day, the wait might end; that some day, salvation would break the cloud of disarray. The other variety also moves, from one source of joy to another; as if this endless search for joy was all that there was to life.
One aspect of these 'break-ups' has been fairly painful. It is the sense of disappointment. One of the poems I once wrote talked about the dangers of stretching yourself for someone - it usually leads to you tearing yourself up in the process. I have been accused of 'counting' instances where I have gone beyond what was needed. My dad often told me of the parable 'Neki kar aur kuen mein daal' (do good, and then forget about it). If not abiding by it in letter and spirit is a crime, then I am a criminal. If the hope of better treatment and basic human respect is like begging, I am the beggar. A house robbed repeatedly only grows in stature. Very obviously, there is something in the house that is desirable; and when that thing is intrinsic to the nature of the house itself, rather than a distinct entity, then constant robberies can only make it grow over time and space.
There is a 'nothingness' in my life right now. What had to be 'achieved', has been achieved. What had to be let go, has been let go. The pain doesn't go. Even six months down the line, it doesn't. Maybe it grows over time. Maybe it grows with every word, every day, every ended relationship and every missed opportunity. Thankfully, Tagore wrote about walking alone. Thankfully, there is always a new friendship with which you can fool yourself. Thankfully, being lonely has a certain poignancy. The heart feels heavy, but it does let you sleep. The pain is dismissed for the night. It will return only tomorrow.
One last thing, and let me state it as such. Arrogance is overstated. We often do not give people a chance - a chance to talk, to try to explain and the like. If they explain, they are out to prove their righteousness. The content doesn't matter - what matters is how many times you argued in the last month. When did judgements become adaptive instead of rational? Either way, judgments are often made under imperfect information. There will always, by definition, be a difference between what people truly believe and what they end up projecting - either intentionally or unintentionally. This stems from the fact that the heart (to be more biologically correct, the emotional part of the brain) is far more versatile than the mouth or other expressive organs are. What is the point of sitting in judgement whether one is arrogant or not? At best, you are right, and given that the other person IS arrogant, he/she doesn't care. At worst, your constant jibes have just killed the will to live in another person, because all that he/she stood for has been massively desecrated.
Hence, in life (as in economic principle), I believe in the magic of free markets. The buyers and sellers in the market are anonymous; it doesn't matter where they came from, what they said, and the like. What matters is the price at which they will trade. Similarly, what (ideally) matters in relationships is not the words, the emotional jugglery or the like; what matters is the action and action alone. Anything else will be biased. And judgemental.
Like a criminal on trial, with this I rest my case.
I start this public soliloquy with a description of the pain. Sometimes the pain is so intense that it is hard to imagine that it isn't real, physical pain. The pain emerges out of nowhere, like an old friend; and I could place my bets that I feel the heart skip a few beats. The one thing I realise about the pain, and which I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life - is that it is always borne alone. No matter how much people around you say that they are there, there are functional barriers that prevent them from keeping their word. For one, they don't quite understand the pain. They will view the pain from the prism of their private experiences. Since no two humans' experiences are ever the same (injective functions?), hence no two evaluations will ever be the same. The words, no matter how sincere, will always ring hollow in the end. Secondly, humans by nature are not very sacrificing. It's almost a law of nature - wherever there is joy, happiness and smiling faces, the heart is drawn. Where there is pain, darkness and brooding, we seek to escape. I would be unfair to say that everyone is like that. I say again, sab aise hi hote hai, and that 'sab' means 'the majority', and not 'for all x'.
Another aspect of human behaviour that I was acquainted with is the level to which other humans matter. There are no dominant strategies in life, and hence the best responses change with the other players' actions. The dark, brooding variety moves from one shoulder to cry on, to another; in the endless hope that some day, the wait might end; that some day, salvation would break the cloud of disarray. The other variety also moves, from one source of joy to another; as if this endless search for joy was all that there was to life.
One aspect of these 'break-ups' has been fairly painful. It is the sense of disappointment. One of the poems I once wrote talked about the dangers of stretching yourself for someone - it usually leads to you tearing yourself up in the process. I have been accused of 'counting' instances where I have gone beyond what was needed. My dad often told me of the parable 'Neki kar aur kuen mein daal' (do good, and then forget about it). If not abiding by it in letter and spirit is a crime, then I am a criminal. If the hope of better treatment and basic human respect is like begging, I am the beggar. A house robbed repeatedly only grows in stature. Very obviously, there is something in the house that is desirable; and when that thing is intrinsic to the nature of the house itself, rather than a distinct entity, then constant robberies can only make it grow over time and space.
There is a 'nothingness' in my life right now. What had to be 'achieved', has been achieved. What had to be let go, has been let go. The pain doesn't go. Even six months down the line, it doesn't. Maybe it grows over time. Maybe it grows with every word, every day, every ended relationship and every missed opportunity. Thankfully, Tagore wrote about walking alone. Thankfully, there is always a new friendship with which you can fool yourself. Thankfully, being lonely has a certain poignancy. The heart feels heavy, but it does let you sleep. The pain is dismissed for the night. It will return only tomorrow.
One last thing, and let me state it as such. Arrogance is overstated. We often do not give people a chance - a chance to talk, to try to explain and the like. If they explain, they are out to prove their righteousness. The content doesn't matter - what matters is how many times you argued in the last month. When did judgements become adaptive instead of rational? Either way, judgments are often made under imperfect information. There will always, by definition, be a difference between what people truly believe and what they end up projecting - either intentionally or unintentionally. This stems from the fact that the heart (to be more biologically correct, the emotional part of the brain) is far more versatile than the mouth or other expressive organs are. What is the point of sitting in judgement whether one is arrogant or not? At best, you are right, and given that the other person IS arrogant, he/she doesn't care. At worst, your constant jibes have just killed the will to live in another person, because all that he/she stood for has been massively desecrated.
Hence, in life (as in economic principle), I believe in the magic of free markets. The buyers and sellers in the market are anonymous; it doesn't matter where they came from, what they said, and the like. What matters is the price at which they will trade. Similarly, what (ideally) matters in relationships is not the words, the emotional jugglery or the like; what matters is the action and action alone. Anything else will be biased. And judgemental.
Like a criminal on trial, with this I rest my case.
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