Once we were hunters (and most still are)

Do you remember talking about my classmates in language classes? The ones who were jealous about me for odd reasons?

Are you sure that they were angry about your language capabilities?

I realized that the same psychology is behind almost all our actions.

Misplaced jealousy, you mean?

We can say more generally, rivalry. We feel competitive against people who live similarly to the way we do and whom we happen to know. We live to outdo them.

I didn't know that your life goal was to get ahead of your next door neighbor!

Others who live differently---who belong to a different tribe, class, nation, gender, etc.---are less prone to become targets of jealousy, even if they are much more endowed.

Didn't you tell me that a classmate in your Klingon course stood up during pronunciation exercises and said, "If someone from the Andromeda Galaxy can say that word right, I should be able to."?

Such things happen... The comment by the student from the Triangulum Galaxy was based on the thought that both galaxies are known to produce linguistically handicapped creatures and that Andromeda was worse on that score. The fact that they were in the same class had already set the stage for the Triangulumian to feel competitive against the Andromedean.

Having hailed from places which are comparable in terms of notoriety for their inaptness in languages, the Triangulumian felt much stronger jealousy... Tell me, did this student manage to master Klingon pronunciation?

If she had been equipped with the ability, she wouldn't have had to make that declaration in the middle of the class. By the way, do you also remember why we are eager to own more and something better than the people around us?

The things that we own and the persons to whom we are closely related are extensions of who we are. By adding more extensions, we attempt to become more powerful than others.

In sum, we want to be superior to the people around us, and one way to achieve this end is to accumulate objects and relationships. There is more to this equation, though. Most of us not only wish to acquire more, but also enjoy the process of acquiring.

Don't count me in. I am one of those who prefer to go straight to the item that I intend to purchase in the store, pay, and get out as quickly as possible.

It doesn't have to be shopping. I know that some people are into fishing, because they love to eat what they catch, but I also know some others who release immediately whatever tugs the line.

Are they vegetarian fishermen who use fishing lures?

Not necessarily. Most of them go to the supermarket to purchase fish for dinner.

Does that make sense?

We can say that the process of making something our own brings us satisfaction.

That sounds familiar, all of the sudden. What about chasing a potential lover until that person becomes interested in you?

It is another case of cherishing the process more than the prize at the end.

Aren't we talking about rather perverse cases here?

Many of us love bargain hunting.

But we also value what we end up buying.

Are you sure about that? You must have some items in your closet that you bought with great excitement because you thought they were good deals, but are now covered with a thick layer of dust.

How did you find out about my wear-on-your-wrist mosquito detector?

Suppose everybody knows what is available at what price, at which store, at what time.

There would be no opportunity for bargain hunting.

Exactly. We tend to think that perfect information is always better than imperfect information, but not so. Many enjoy making use of that imperfection.

And, it has to be you who has less imperfect information than the rest of us, right?

That is what everyone wishes for her/himself. The joy of finding a good deal comes from outwitting the masses. Suppose you come across a great find and purchase it. That should make you happy.

But if I discover the following day that everybody in the neighborhood bought exactly the same thing at the same price...

Or even slightly cheaper...

I would feel very disappointed. I may even feel stupid or angry.

You see? Here, too, is the desire to be better off than others.

I thought it was more about outwitting others.

You are right---the word, 'outwitting,' is more suited for our discussion. The word can nicely explain our attraction not only to good-deal hunting, but also to animal hunting and fishing. In the latter, it is about outwitting the animals and fish that you want to catch.

Whereas in good-deal hunting, it is about outwitting other buyers.

We could say that we outsmart the sellers, too, because we are paying less than we are willing to for that particular item or service. Or at least, that is how we perceive good bargains. In some cases, the sellers succeed in giving us that impression through clever merchandising.

That's true. I have seen advertisements for offers with limitations. It is valid only for members, only for a certain period, or while the supply lasts.

They sometimes take the opposite tack and say that it is an opportunity that nobody should miss. If you do, you are stupid.

But you know, I derive satisfaction from taking advantage of a good deal, and that without talking about it to other people.

Do you feel smart and lucky when you find a deal of your liking?

I don't feel dumb and unlucky for sure!

You will feel dumb if you later learn that the 'deal' was not exactly so.

I may not confirm that the deal is truly a deal by boasting about it to others, but it is important for my satisfaction that I believe in its value. Is this your point?

Yes, you need to be convinced that you have gone about more cleverly than others.

Deal-hunting is all about trying to be smarter than people around us, then...

Do you know what is so infuriating about the squirrels that feast on your strawberries in the garden and manage to avoid your traps?

They steal my fruits of labor.

That, of course. More crucially, they are outsmarting you.

With their tiny brains! I wouldn't ask them for shopping advice, though.

The other side of the coin is that our aversion to being outwitted is so strong that it prevents many of us from behaving cooperatively.

We are afraid that compromising would be taken as a sign of weakness and submission.

It is possible to get the message across that it is not so, but that would be a long-term project.

Civility and civilization are time consuming...

Our view is supported by the evolution of Slow Food movement into a more general Slow Movement.

We have talked about how proximity breeds jealousy. I think it is also true that proximity engenders compassion.

How does that work?

When I was in primary school, we were taught that we should not forget that we are all alike. Therefore, if an act by someone inflicts pain on us, we should not act similarly upon others. In short, we were told to be nice to each other, because we were more or less the same.

What your teacher taught you is ideal and what I argued is reality.

I disagree. When we think that the other party consists of beings which are below us, we hesitate little in hating them. Consider war propaganda, for example. But once we recognize that they are human beings, just as we are, we develop warm feelings toward them.

If that were true, we would have no conflict among people who recognize that all of us are of the same species.

I'd say some of us have not embraced that fact.

We can say that. But attaining that understanding is not the end of the story.

How so?

Once we get used to each other, or realize that we are alike, we enter the situation that I described.

Competition against one another?

There is a honeymoon period in any relationship, be it between persons or between a person and an object---we talked about it some time ago. The ideal is to stay at that stage, but the reality is that sooner or later it degenerates.

Little respect for each other? But how do you explain your case of helping the starving babies in Darfur, then? That is based on the recognition that we are all on the same boat.

Many of us are ready to help others if doing so would not empower them to threaten our standing.

You're terrible...

You're shooting the messenger, my dear comrade. Think about it, life would be deadly boring if there were no room to strive for the ideal!

Familiarity poses a limit to Operation Mosquito Sting

Humiliation by a stranger is easier to handle than by someone we know.

I suppose you are thinking about a dirty look or name-calling on the street.

Most likely we will not see the "aggressor" again, so we don't have to worry about what to do then.

We tend to treat people whom we know with kid gloves anyway.

Are you sure about that? I'd say it depends on the culture. Some cultures mold people to be more polite to strangers and some other the other way around.

The rationale for each strategy is...?

For the former, you take the safest approach not to offend the person whose hotspots are unknown to you. For the latter, you take extra care, because someone is closer and matters more to you.

You said last time that we can maintain our dignity by acting as if the humiliating act were a mere mosquito sting; whether the "aggressor" is a stranger or an acquaintance should not matter.

The problem is a bit more complicated if we are more or less forced to have close relationships with the person in question. Neighbors, classmates, colleagues, friends, family members...

Relationships with such people can vary widely, but they are certainly closer than strangers are to us. You were of the opinion that people who are closer to us have a much bigger chance of hurting us, and we are also prone to hurt them more easily. Doesn't that depend on the culture, as you implied earlier today?

I think not. Even when culture codes instruct us to be more careful with people whom we know than with people whom we do not know, proximity makes hurting more of a profound nature.

You also said when someone hurts us badly or frequently, it becomes difficult to trust that person.

It is also very difficult to spend more than a few fleeting moments with a person whom you cannot trust.

I guess I can keep a courteous distance from her/him, if s/he were a neighbor, a classmate, or a colleague.

You guessed it right. It becomes a problem for a family member or a very close friend with a long history, whom we are obliged to see at family or social gatherings. If we skip such gatherings, there will be some blaming going around.

What if the personalities are such that, despite the legal and/or biological relatedness, the parties involved simply do not get along?

Ah, so you have noticed how much people complain about parents, children, spouses, in-laws...

What should we do when our dignity is damaged by one of those people? Your suggestion was to stick to the mosquito-sting interpretation.

I am beginning to think that it may not work with these super-close people. They think they know the other party so well in these relationships, while Operation Mosquito Sting works only if the "aggressors" are observant enough.

These relationships will endure come what may in the foreseeable future, and that makes us less careful and observing about each other. In some cases, people know that they have committed an offense but ignore it, because they know that the other party will come back.

You see that it is truly a toxic mix? Because we are closer, we have more information about each other. Because we are closer, our psychological barriers are lower. Because we are closer, our efforts to restore our dignity may not even be recognized. And, because we are closer, we have plenty of instances in which we are obliged to come face to face.

Do you think Bill ever apologized to Hillary?

Do you think it could have made any difference? Anyway, I do not want to be a serial victim.

Or a serial offender!

When we cough up the courage and finally tell the offender, who happens to be super close to you, that s/he has hurt our dignity, the reaction is usually to play it down.

Not only that. The offender can get angry.

Isn't that curious? Sometimes, we are even told that it is our problem if our dignity has been damaged.

Nobody likes to be criticized, and if a criticism comes from someone they felt comfortable with or they thought were "on their side," it becomes something like a proclamation of betrayal.

By the way, we tend to think that the smaller the number of members involved in the group, the more intimate and the stronger the relationships.

Why not? The vast majority of deep conversations is tête à tête.

We forget that there are occasions when we have to cool off. If it is a big group, we can turn to others whom we do not have conflict with, and that often prevents us from being driven to an irrevocable split. We can stay in the group for the sake of other members, even if we cease to communicate with the offender.

It is not good to belong to a big group that satisfies all our needs because we would stop trying to reach out to more different types of people---didn't you say that?

My focus here is a kind of group to which we have no recourse but to belong, e.g., family. As we all know, "[h]e who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." It holds not only for society, but for family as well.

Good, old Aristotle.

When the membership is compulsory and for a lifetime, it is best if the group contains diverse members and has the capacity to let off steam. Even as a child, I could see that there are benefits to be part of a bigger family.

How so?

My parents, my siblings and I lived with my grandparents, my two aunts and my grandparents' housekeeper for a while. When my mother denied me ice cream on a hot summer day, I knew I could turn to my grandmother.

It's all about ice cream, then!

Not only that. I could tell that there does not exist anything like "the correct" way for anything, because when I posed the same question to different adults separately, they gave me various responses. I believe that it gave me a more balanced view of the world.

That may be true, but haven't you heard of Aunt We-Are-A-Good-Family and Uncle No-Arguing-In-the-Family-Please heading factions and dividing the big clan?

"Man is by nature a political animal."

Aristotle strikes again!

Treacherous trinity: trust, dignity and proximity

You've been suggesting that dignity is the most important aspect in our lives.

I'm not the only one to think so. The very first Article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations says, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

The Declaration talks about human dignity, but it never defines what it really is.

We can say that it is about inherent worthiness of each person.

What does that mean? It surely shouldn't mean that an idiot deserves less respect than other people.

What is the respect that an idiot deserves? The concept of human dignity says that idiocy should not make a difference in how that person is treated.

Suppose that there is a person who is easily offended. Won't it be more difficult for her/him to protect her/his dignity than for others who are less easily offended? If so, it suggests that we are not uniform in terms of dignity.

You are talking about dignity in a sense slightly different from that in the Universal Declaration. The Declaration is more about how to set up social institutions so that human dignity could be systematically protected. Examples would be intolerance of torture, slavery and the like.

Dignity can be taken away by personal injuries and that is where our focus has shifted, I see. The shift probably suggests that we---you and I---do not see with our own eyes any systematic damage done to human dignity on a daily basis.

Are you sure that you do not witness dignity challenged in our everyday lives? It is possible that such instances are so prevalent that we have become blind to them. I think the kinds of discrimination touched upon by Article 2 of the Declaration happens everyday, everywhere.

That article is rather lengthy. "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty."

Do you remember talking about forgiving---that the burden of coming to terms with what happened is on the victims? I'm afraid the same principle applies here.

That is...?

When someone does or says something that deprives of your dignity, you cannot obviously go back in time and undo the doing or the saying. Your dignity is taken away for the moment.

And, you are saying that the best is to forget about it?

We can restore our dignity by responding or reacting to the incident in certain ways. To act as if it were nothing may be indeed the best way in some cases.

We should not act as if the offense was effective. That is, we should not take their bait or play their game. Is this what you have in mind?

Yes. You may reveal that you have noticed the offensive action or remark, but never show explicit anger or shock caused by it.

That will be easier for a verbal one than for a physical one...

Certainly. It is again up to the offended whether something can be done to the damage. It is possible to protect our dignity by firmly believing that others cannot possibly do something like that to us, in other words, by staying calm.

It will be best if the "aggressor" admits or realizes that they have not succeeded in humiliating. Does it come so easily?

Most likely, it will take a several rounds or more. It is possible that it never happens. But compared to preserving one's dignity, establishing and maintaining trust may be more difficult.

I remember that you run away whenever someone indicates that s/he does not trust you.

I don't actually run away! I just feel like it.

You also said that trusting a stranger, or acting as if you did, is against what biology dictates us to do, and that is what civilization consists of: defiance of biology.

The trust issue is more difficult on that account than the dignity issue. After all, our dignity is about how we think about ourselves.

Can we say that safeguarding dignity is part of our biological mechanism to survive?

I think so. On the other hand, the most primitive survival instinct says it is best not to place trust in someone casually. Trust is more about how we evaluate other people; it depends much more on others' behavior than in dignity.

Didn't you say human relationships are based on reciprocity? If so, you do have control.

The reciprocity principle works in many cases, but not in all. Trusting others would not make them trustworthy, at least, overnight. I can think of many complicated examples.

For example?

A person may be very nice to you, but nasty to others. Should you trust that person?

I've seen such relationships. Some couples are like that; they are only nice to each other.

You have stepped into yet another territory. Even devils become angelic when in love.

Doesn't that suggest that we should all be in love with each other?

Fortunately, we can't be forced to be in love with someone. Anyway, you implied that closeness in relationships brings trust. I think you have mistaken predictability as trust.

Predictability comes from observed consistency of past events, and so does trust. However, you can also be untrustworthy and consistently so. I know that predictability and trust are not the same.

When we are close to someone, you have more opportunities to observe that person and s/he becomes more predictable than others. Closeness also means that you are more likely to say to each other what you would not to people who are less close.

And that includes all the bad things about each other, right?

Yes, I knew I could trust you!

Let's say you have become predictable.

Closeness does not necessary mean belittling each other, but the possibility of exposing dark emotions and thoughts is certainly larger.

The dark emotions and thoughts could be about your partner in the relationship, but also about yourself and everything else in the world.

The problem is that it is difficult to maintain dignity when you let out your fear, anger, jealousy in unedited forms.

Proximity is a difficult ground for dignity, then.

How can you have trust, if dignity is damaged, now and then? That means the sources of comfort can be self-destructive by their very nature. But we all need our own coterie, a group of people who, we think, understand us well.

I knew it! It's treacherous---trust, dignity and proximity.

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...