Because you're doing what I'd rather not

So, it's all about me, me, me. I live in such a way that I have the largest influence possible in every conceivable way.

None of us wants to be treated like trash. We often talk about that simple biological urge with the word, dignity. Respect is a good word, too.

Some don't care about it, though.

Such people have experienced events that cost them their dignity. In order not to be deeply disappointed, they condition themselves that it does not interest them.

Deep down, they do care...

The me-me-me principle says that all of us are born with the desire to be treated decently by others.

Do you see that creepy looking guy at the table near the window? What if he comes here and offers a drink just like that?

... Anyone who accepts anything from him must be quite desperate in terms of attention, money, or both.

Ah, so isn't it more complicated? You're saying that his offer would offend you. His attempt to be nice would negatively affect your dignity.

We have different criteria for dignity. For example, some people cannot get themselves to cleaning toilet bowls, because they always had someone else to do it for them. For the rest of us, it has nothing to do with dignity. It's simply a matter of being responsible for your own living environment.

It makes a difference whether you do it for yourself, or for others and that for making a living.

Some tasks are unavoidable in any society. Public-toilet cleaning, garbage collecting, changing diapers of the elderly, to name a few. They need to be done by someone and we are collectively dependent on people who are in charge of them.

Other menial jobs, such as working on an assembly line and tending a convenience store, fit in that category as well.

Somebody's got to do what is considered menial, but everybody would rather do something else.

I'm sure some people prefer tending a store to lecturing computer science.

I agree, but consider the mix of financial rewards and social respect of the two jobs. Grosso modo, a professor scores higher than a store clerk.

What if the professor secretly generates and spreads computer viruses and the clerk is a jazz musician by night?

Oh, please, none of such exceptions! I want to keep our discussion simple.

I thought you wouldn't believe anything unless it's complicated.

Without denying that assessment in totality, let me say that...

You see? By the way, isn't the store clerk what he is because he slacked off in school? That is, by his own fault?

Shouldn't people who'd rather be professors be grateful because he is doing what they don't want to do?

Then, the clerk should be happy that the professors are doing what he doesn't want to do or can't do.

Think about an ideal society in which everyone studies hard and achieves the same level of education. Someone still has to clean public toilets. However, the respect for toilet cleaners would be lower than that for professors, as it always has been.

The cleaners' me-me-me desire would not be fulfilled... I think those with smaller me-me-me feelings become cleaners in any case.

Do you think they have absolutely zero of me-me-me?

That's possible.

I think not. They could be trained to be that way, but none of us is totally devoid of me-me-me.

What about the so-called saints?

As long as you are a living creature, me-me-me is in you. As if to make the point, offers for canonization are never declined.

That's because it happens after they're dead! What if we could train people to think that they are happy with cleaning jobs?

That's exactly what happens with class systems. Because people in power want others to do what they don't want to, they condition the lower class to think that they only deserve less desirable jobs.

I know that overt class-systems are out of fashion, but what is exactly wrong with them?

Their arbitrariness. If you happen to be born into an upper class family, you do not need to sacrifice your dignity, and if it is a low class family, you have to. You have no choice over it.

That happens even without class systems. If you are born into a rich family, you have better chances of getting better education and leading a more comfortable life. You have no choice whether to be born into a rich family or a poor one. The same with political connection.

Yes. The difference is that, with class systems, the entire society thinks that you are good for this, but not good enough for that. The labeling is rigid and has almost law-like status.

Forced changes in dignity criteria so that they fit the interests of the powerful...

Anyway, people who sacrifice their dignity for doing what needs to be done in the society should be rewarded for that.

I've read that you should observe during a dinner date how your date treats the servers, but it looks like you can substitute servers with garbage collectors.

In my opinion, that's the easy part. The difficult part is rewarding them financially. Undesirable, but necessary, jobs tend to be low skill, and hence, they command near minimum-wage. If we agree that it is impossible to have a normal life with such income, it means that they should be paid more.

What do you mean a normal life, here?

If you are healthy and work full-time in an honest job, you should be able to purchase a modest home, raise a family, give good education to the children, go on a vacation, and retire without serious monetary concerns. If you are sick, you should have access to affordable medical care and supplementary income; your children shouldn't starve simply because you fell ill.

That means relatively high prices of goods and/or taxes.

Just as I want to keep my dignity, I imagine others would want to do so as well. Cooperation is required to honor this fundamental desire for all, and that entails monetary adjustments.

Hmmm, I think you are particularly finicky about your dignity.

Ha, so much the better!

Diet-Soda for watching news on starvation

Do you know why most parents are eager to train and educate their children?

Out of parental love, I assume. So that they could have a good life as grown-ups.

What is parental love?

It is about loving your children as much as, or sometimes more than, yourself.

Your children are separate entities that come biologically the closest to you. You can get crazy about your kids because they are your immediate biological extensions. Equally close are your parents, by the way. They are up, instead of down, the genealogy tree.

But, we usually pay much more attention to our children than to our parents, although our experience as parents should teach us how our own parents feel toward us.

Let's say it's all about being attracted to the prettier.

Now, now, isn't it more about investing in the future versus the past?

You can say that, too. If you wish your bloodline to continue, your efforts should be directed to your offspring, not ancestors. And, it's not only our family members that we treat as if we were one. In a group, all people of your race would be "us" versus one person in the group of a different race.

That's still biological.

It can be something as artificial as nationality. If there is difference in behavior along the lines of nationality, it can be used as a dividing wall between us and them.

We want the ones with behavior similar to ours to survive and thrive. To the extent that the basis of any behavior is biochemical, nationality differentiation also has a biological element.

Similarly, we can explain parental love for adopted children, because they would be behaviorally closer to the parents than children of other parents. Extending this logic means that we care less about people who are not in our community, much less about those who live outside the border, and even less about people on the other continent.

What if someone of a different race is your next door neighbor and people of your race live across the sea?

That is a complicated case. I'd say there is no fixed formula as to which would be considered "us." The basic principle is that the more you can relate to, the more you care about that person and the stronger the feeling of "us."

Sounds pretty obvious.

The part that is not emphasized enough is the importance of the mix. Whoever has the least in common is one of "them."

Obvious, again!

Many of us watch the news on starvation in the other corner of the world, with a can of diet-soda in hand. It's the low-cal version, because habitual overeating has made us overweight.

I bet the diet-soda drinkers feel sorry for the starving people.

But that does not stop us from eating an extra serving of ice cream the following day.

That scoop of ice cream cannot possibly be shipped to the place where people are starving.

Practical limitations aside, what if you see your sibling on television looking like a skeleton because of lack of food?

Which sibling of mine are you thinking about?

What if it is your best friend? Your best friend's mother? Your best friend's mother's cousin? Your best friend's mother's cousin's father-in-law?

It's getting less and less interesting.

That's the point. The less related the person is, the less compassion you feel.

You're really stating too much of the obvious today.

One person starving is as bad as another person starving. Yet, we do not act on the situation with the same urgency. To me, this is ethically inacceptable. What may be natural is not necessarily moral. Suppose your brother lost a leg in an accident and you would like to get him an artificial leg. What if you could save three starving babies on the other side of the equator for a year with the money that you would be spending on the leg?

The vast majority of us think the money should be spent for the brother.

Choosing one non-life-threatening case over three life-threatening cases?

At least, that is what is accepted as common sense.

The choice happens to be the biologically correct one, and our instinct says that is also the morally correct one.

Isn't that instinct also part of our biology?

Definitely. The way out of this dilemma is to tell yourself that the starving babies also have siblings who could and would help them, just as you would help your brother.

To think that there is another helping hand, when you are almost certain that there is none.

It is easier to live with dead babies in foreign lands than with outraged relatives in the same country... Tellingly, your relatives would say, "For God's sake, it's your brother. You don't even know these babies!"

Self-protection, again!

I'm afraid that is all there is to life by definition. If we were all self-damaging or suicidal, we as a species would be wiped out.

You know, I'm getting a bit tired of this. Everything is about survival of myself, my lineage, my race, my kind of people, and ultimately, homo sapiens.

Given the fact that we are biological beings, the most important imperatives are the ones you just mentioned.

It's all by definition...

Think about a variation of the brother-or-babies situation. Suppose there are only four of you left on the planet, you and the three starving babies.

No way I can take care of three at the same time!

Your resource that could have gone to your brother would necessarily go to the babies. If not, it would be considered immoral.

Except that there wouldn't be anyone who could pass judgment on my action.

Isn't it obscene that by turning off the television we can forget about others' life-or-death problems, even though we are responsible for world politics as electorate?

We should be talking to Jean-Paul...

Are you talking about Jean-Paul with glasses, not the one with a skullcap? I don't think the bespectacled one was into diet-soda, but I can't be sure about the other...

Not by birth? Try marriage

Why does a wife's opinion have more weight than others' in the mind of the husband?

I have been thinking about powerful men, such as heads of states, and their spouses. When people around you have every reason to steal your power, your spouse's loyalty becomes all the more valuable.

It is possible, though, that the president's wife team up with the bachelor vice-president who is more attractive than the president.

Considering the possibility of losing everything, including life, when the president discovers the wife's infidelity, it is much wiser for the wife to give good advice to the president-husband; the president can stay in power and she can enjoy the power as the first lady.

Why is it that the same opinion is more valuable when it comes from someone whom you like and trust?

It's related to our survival as species. We need to be totally devoted to each other in order to reproduce and nurture offsprings. It's an enterprise that requires a tremendous amount of cooperative energy. Aren't you more forgiving about your lover than your best friend, for example?

It depends!

At least, when you are madly in love.

When we are crazily into someone, everything about her/him is interesting, funny or pleasant. Even admirable.

Have you noticed that the same traits start bothering you when the relationship begins to cool off?

They can become totally irritating in the end. In the worst cases, all turns repelling, including what attracted us to that person in the first place.

You realize how fickle this business of liking and loving is? That's why I try to stay out of it.

I don't believe what you just said.

That's because you are not in love with me, you see.

One and a half point for a sly interpretation of my statement. I meant to say that people who claim to have no interest in roses and the like are the ones who secretly crave à-l'eau-de-rose stuff, much more so than others.

If you are trying to tell me that I am into anything mushy, I vehemently object!

You deny my assessment because you are not in love with me.

Okay, I got your point. By the way, our blood-kins are biological extensions of ourselves and we make use of that fact quite often. I notice it every time when I happen to refer to the skills that I have and the person who is listening to me does not and turns competitive.

Did you brag again about the fencing tournament that you won as a high school student to your colleague who does not play fencing?

A typical reaction is something like, "I don't play fencing, but my sister does. In fact, she's exceptional."

Because the colleague has no experience or knowledge, s/he can't say, "You play fencing? I do, too. I'm pretty good at lunge and belong to the Dardi school. What about you?" Instead, s/he refers to her/his sister, who is more like her/himself vis-à-vis you.

They always bring up parents, children, spouses, or siblings, and occasionally in-laws, but very rarely friends. "Oh, you speak Lufu? ... My mom speaks it fluently." "Well, your cocktails are good, but my brother has a great shaker. He makes wonderful "Gel Us." That one is difficult because it has to be in four layers..."

"Gel Us"? I've never heard of that cocktail. Is it sorbet-like?

Never mind. Anyway, they could have said instead, "How wonderful that you speak Lufu," and "You've got talent as a bartender." Spouses are special because, although they are not related by blood, people treat them as if they were.

No biological relation, but considered extensions of themselves.

And it all happens unconsciously. To me, that's the interesting part, because these instinctive acts concord well with the traditional notion of marriage; it is an agreement between families and about blood lines.

What about the political aspect in traditional alliances?

Marriages become political only if they guarantee fusion of two families. In other words, only if two families regard each other as one after the union is sealed. Usually that became more solid after a child was born, a true biological fusion of the families.

The political aspect is based on the biological one.

The former cannot exist without the latter. Reflecting this nature of marriage, in some societies, participation in the most important part of ceremony is restricted to blood kins and spouses.

Even a very close friend cannot attend?

No, not unless that person is considered by family members as someone who has taken up the responsibility of the deceased father of the bridegroom, etc.

A very close friend of yours is not considered "one of us" by your family.

Traditional societies must have recognized the precariousness of friendships. The only way a friend can gain a family-member like status is to become one.

Marry me, if you want to be one of us... Is this what you mean?

The good news here is that it doesn't have to be you; anyone in your family who is available would do.

What if I'm the most desirable?

Plausible hypotheses only, please!

Taking it personally

So, it's all dependent on the instructor whether we become interested in and good at something.

Like it or not, strong emotions are catching. If someone is passionate about what s/he teaches, that rubs off on the students. Plus, if the instructor is deft at guiding the uninitiated through the thickets, it's almost guaranteed that even the apathetic students start thinking about the subject.

It will first be about this strange instructor who loves something that looks awfully boring.

Gradually, that would make them think about the subject that s/he teaches. It is up to each student, whether that interest is sustained after the departure of the instructor. Not all students in a class would become, for example, historians even if they had an exceptional history teacher. But a good instructor can make students interested in something, at least for a while.

The movie, "Dead Poets Society," is about what a charismatic instructor could do.

Instead of being drawn by charisma, it could be a crush on a cute instructor, fresh out of school. In general, some kind of personal admiration would work.

We shouldn't forget that it goes the other way around, too. It could be quite detrimental when you sense that the instructor does not like you and you are clueless as to why.

How grades are determined is crucial, too. They're akin to prices. We are ever ready to change our actions, depending on relative prices. In the US where oil used to be cheap and abundant, the sudden increase in the price of oil of late is affecting travel, housing size and location.

More people are ready to take public transportation, live in a smaller house and not purchase one in the suburbs where hours of driving is required to get to work.

One day, my sister found out that her biology teacher examines only what is written as footnotes in the textbook.

How bizzare!

It is, but as a student, she responded to it by memorizing the footnotes and not much else. Exams are very personal anyway. It's all about how the instructor sees the subject, or education of that subject.

It's all personal...

On that note, the scary thing is that attraction to a person can make you do almost anything.

Is it about romantic love?

That's the most obvious example, but we have the tendency to give into personal cult.

Personal cult as in many of us trying to imitate the way a movie star dresses?

You got it. A person becomes prominent for her/his talent in one area, and then, other aspects of that person's life increase in value.

I know that one. A cookbook by a famous actress is much more likely to be published than one by an unknown author with good recipes. That happens even when there is no evidence that a well-known actress cooks well.

Think about the big photographs of authors that occupy the entire back covers of bestseller books. The value of the writing is not dependent on how the writer may look, and yet, many people are interested in the writers' appearances.

Another instance of personal cult.

I think monotheism has the same element.

How so?

The followers of that religion believe in whatever its founder said and did. Every act, even the trivial ones, are interpreted to have some meaning. I think ultimately everything in this world is deeply influenced by the personalities and the looks of the persons involved.

Another sweeping generalization of yours.

Why has monotheism taken over polytheism? It's because we are into personal worship. Think about this one. What if Ron and Maggie were repelled by each other?

I think the Berlin Wall would have come down anyway.

Their mutual admiration for shared political convictions encouraged the two in implementing them.

That's about their politics and not about how they thought about each other personally. As far as I know, Ron could not function without Nancy.

That certainly doesn't mean that he thought all other women were equally worthless. If both Ron and Maggie thought "Yikes! I don't know what it is, but I can't stand this person,'' they would not have had contact in the way they did.

Do you think Maggie served him tea with scones, while Ron showed her one of his movies that he had tucked into his suitcase?

They're lucky, because one of them could tell clotted cream from white and grey matters that the other must have been carrying around in a jar and put on the table... If there had been no encouragement from the other side of the Atlantic, their zeal for smaller governments with bigger military budgets and lower income taxes could have been curtailed.

Do you really believe so?

I do. Another example is Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai. When Nixon visited China in 1972, Zhou took him around to show the country. What if Nixon just couldn't stand Zhou's manners or his face? Or what if Zou had had no respect for Nixon and did little hide it?

Whether Zhou and Nixon were disgusted by each other or not, Nixon must have realized how much money there is to be made if every Chinese household were to buy a TV, a fridge, a car, etc. He could still see that it was politically wise to normalize the diplomatic relationship. Zhou must have liked it that it was the Americans who were courting them and not the other way around.

No doubt, money can mask certain smell and some other inconvenient, unpleasant aspects of people. Let me bolster my argument by referring to many women who wield power through their politician husbands. It is their personal relationships that make the wives' consultation valuable to the husbands. Some of them even inherit the official titles after the husbands' death.

Of personal likes and dislikes, this world is made...

The true significance of a bad grade

Have you ever flunked a course or an exam?

...

Have you?

What made you think of that? Me, fail a course?

It's a simple, innocent question, you know...

Your question says more about what you think about me than anything else.

Hmm, I'd say your defensiveness implies something.

Why do we have to talk about school performance?

Isn't there a subject that interested you before signing up for a class, but not once it started? Or, one that suddenly turned intriguing with the arrival of a new instructor? Think about the courses that you loved. Didn't you have great instructors for those?

Let me see... When I liked the instructor, I was more motivated to study that subject, that's true. When I hated the teacher, that feeling affected my general view of the field that s/he taught.

You see? I wasn't trying to tell you that I have some doubt about your intellectual capability. Rather, it's about how much the quality of instruction matters in our learning.

That sounds obvious.

It does. But we tend to blame the students more than justified.

You mean if I did badly in, say, a course in history of wigs, that's because the instructor wasn't good?

Yes, you failed in that course because your teacher did not succeed in arousing your curiosity and convince you that the pain necessary to understand the subject is well worth it.

Let me clear about one thing, though. I never received an F or a 0 in my life!

What about a C+ or a 1?

I understand the difference between A+ and A, or 20 and 19, but I always wondered if it makes any sense to distinguish C+ from C, or 1 from 0.

Let me repeat, if you did not do well in a course, the instructor is to blame.

Are you sure about putting the entire responsibility on the instructor?

Okay, I concede that nobody can present anything that captivates all thirty novices at a time.

The smaller the class size is, the better the instruction could be.

The more the students are alike, the easier it is, too. A scene from a movie that I saw on TV as a child must have shaped my view about education. It was about teaching four or five illiterate teenagers who are gangsters of sorts. The teacher succeeds in getting them interested by choosing the right reading material.

Something about drug trafficking?

Close. He chose erotica.

You have been influenced by strange movies...

Have you ever thought about the negative effects of politics among the students in a class?

How do you engage in politics when you are sitting there to get a better grade?

Most of us try to make life difficult for students who does exceptionally well, all in defense of ourselves.

We call them names, snatch away their thick glasses, exclude them from our fun activities, sneer when they manage to answer difficult questions...

Yes, we do our best so that we do not look that bad in comparison with that irritatingly smart student. If you are not bright, but not ready to make the smart ones miserable, you feel miserable yourself.

Plus, when you get to high school, there's that peer pressure to be bad...

I didn't think about all such negative effects of being taught in a class of twenty or more, until recently. I had simply accepted it as fact of life. But it occurred to me that it comes with democracy.

What has democracy got to do with education in a classroom of twenty?

Democratization of education. I am beginning to understand its downside.

In other words, you think it was better when good and higher education was only for the privileged?

I happened to have the opportunity to receive one-on-one instruction for two weeks, seven hours per day. When I found out how effective it was, I was flabbergasted.

Give me the phone number of the psychiatric ward where your instructor ended up after teaching you. I know we have a lot to talk, if s/he is up to that, of course.

She may have suffered, but I absolutely loved it. It was geared to my pace, and only mine. If there was anything I didn't understand, it was explained until I understood it well. If I was interested in something not in the instruction plan of the day, the plan was changed to accommodate my curiosity. And after a few days, I realized there was nobody throwing paper balls at me or giving me dirty looks, just a smiling and encouraging instructor in front of me.

You weren't bothered by other students far smarter than you are, you mean.

I learned as much as I wanted and what I wanted. I tell you, it was heaven.

The instructor must have been extremely patient, competent, mature, and...

Yes, yes, all of that. Another important attribute of an instructor is to be altruistic. Teaching is about passing on knowledge and skills that you own. If the instructor feels intimidated by or jealous about a smart student, or contemptuous of a not-so-bright student, education would not be effective.

Or, if s/he does not recognize a gifted student as such, as was the case with Thomas Edison and many others. We need saints as instructors.

I am now a believer of education in the aristocratic tradition. Consider two cases. One, a farmer's daughter who is smart, but does not have access to formal education. Another, equally smart Count's son whose father employs a private tutor for him.

Better yet, a different tutor for each subject, all of whom are well versed in the field they teach.

Further suppose that the Count links the tutors' remuneration to how well the son is learning and how happy he is.

We also have to suppose that the kid is keen to learn.

That, too.

Under such conditions, we shouldn't be surprised if the Count's son turns out to be a Charles Darwin and the equally smart farmer's daughter dies as a farmer and gets buried by an unmarked tombstone.

Exactly. It's the access to good instruction that matters, not the innate capability.

I think there are hopeless cases, though. But putting that aside, it means we should not be hooting about democratization of education.

That wasn't my proposal. It's just that...

I know what you're thinking! If you had been born a bit earlier, you're sure you would be the Count's son, not the farmer's daughter, to become a Leonardo da Vinci or a Charles Darwin or...

I can't deny that it's a very attractive perspective. Think about having a walk every morning in your garden, well tended by the gardeners for the estate, to discuss philosophy with a private tutor. The topic could be the nature of mathematical truths. I role-play Ludwig Wittgenstein while the tutor takes the position of Bertrand Russell. All that at the tender age of six...

Have you realized that the possibility is much larger to be born as a farmer's daughter than as a Count's son?

Or the possibility of being born with great ambition, but no talent to match?