I'm an accomplice in the crime (and so are you)

Comrade... turn around! ... Stay still.

...

Hey, I just plucked this out of your back. Hmmm... doesn't it look like an ostrich feather?

It's a bad joke, comrade... The issue is still tormenting me, but I have drummed up enough courage to talk about something else.

You didn't want to harp on it?

If I don't talk about my problems, people think they have been resolved, or worse, I have accepted to live with them. If I talk about it more than once, people get tired of me.

Don't worry, everyone can tell that you look more like a ghost than an ostrich with its head buried in a hole. You're so pale, almost transparent...

You know, I think all of us wish others to be ostriches. We know that problems in life are difficult to solve, and we are too powerless, lazy, or self-centered to provide help until they are happily resolved.

Plus, we'd rather hear good stories, not the same, old, gloomy ones.

In other words, we give each other tremendous pressure to focus on obligations, duties and fun at the moment, or short-term at best... Incidentally, I was thinking whatever is good about me owes to my own efforts.

I'm relieved. You sound more like yourself now.

Many of us think that we are doing extremely well, given the traits and the personalities of our parents. Have you ever thought how suspiciously universal the idea is? We didn't even need figures like J.C., M.A., or S.G. to spread the word.

Don't they tell you instead to respect your parents?

That is precisely because we are biologically wired to think that we are much better than our parents. Without that wiring, most will never become independent from them and take on the task of changing the world for the better.

To view the elders unfavorably has a positive side to it, you mean.

The willingness to change is useful, because adaptation to different circumstances necessarily requires change. As we know well, nothing is static in this world.

The ability to change allows you to stay put, too, if necessary.

Think about various societies around the world. The ones that are further away from the Plastic Age tend to have more rigid hierarchies based on age and less impetus to change on their own.

Although they face enormous force to do so from outside, mainly from the people of the Plastic Age...

Respect for the seniors means respect for their contribution to the society. The problem is that most of us become less creative over age.

That is, they become averse to change while the rest of the world is changing.

At least two factors contribute to that aversion. One is the vested interest that we develop over the years. We naturally position ourselves so as to derive the maximum possible benefit from the world as we find it.

We need some time to develop attitude, thoughts, and life style that are suited for the societies that we live in. By the time we have managed to optimize them given the constraints, we no longer wish to change the constraints.

The second is biological. Our brain can get cluttered with all the conventions set up by the previous generation, through our efforts to learn and live with them. It may prevent us from being different from the older generations, despite our wish to be so.

That's why we are told that we are unrealistic when we are young.

Sois jeune et tais toi !

Be young and shut up! So said the General...

When we read the slogans from that time, it is evident that the young pushed for changes and accused the not-so-old, the old and the very old for their complacency and lack of imagination. You know this one? Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible.

Be realistic, ask the impossible.

Prenez vos désirs pour la réalité.

Take your desires for reality.

Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n'as pas besoin de lui.

The boss needs you, you don't need him. ... Comrade, your breathing has gotten audibly heavy.

Anyway, we haven't heard of the older generation revolting against the younger.

Well, they don't need to. They are the ones with power, so when they don't like how things are, they can punish whom they think are culprits.

You know, it is not only our ability and willingness to question the status quo that decline with age, but also politeness.

What about kids who throw tantrums at the toy department? Surely, they don't do the same when they are older.

As children, we are taught to be polite and considerate toward others, and it takes time before we become capable of practicing it. I'd say we reach our peak when we are around eighteen with respect to politeness and consideration.

Do you want to tell me that a thirty-six-year old is rude compared to an eighteen-year old?

Of course, there is variation among individuals and that gets greater as we age. But, I do not hesitate to say that an average eighteen-year old tends to take more of her/his environment into account than an average thirty-six-year old from the same society.

I am not sure about that. When I think how I was at that age...

You are blushing.

Some things I did and thought were quite immature, embarrassing, and stupid, but I did not think so at all. The word, immature, was not in my dictionary to begin with.

You are right, an eighteen-year old would most likely do not have the ability to judge his own action, but when s/he is told that it is stupid, s/he tends to listen. Whereas a thirty-six-year old has a better idea of what s/he should be doing, s/he tends to go with whatever suits her/him. The former has less experience, but also less shrewdness.

Your theory must be strictly about averages, because I can think of thousands of counterexamples.

The world population is soon to pass the 7 billion mark, so thousands is nothing... Has it never struck you that we seem to regress over time?

I don't think I have become increasingly ruder after my eighteenth birthday.

Remember, we are talking in the aggregate. I think honesty is another good example.

We have touched on that subject, and I agreed with you that honesty is promoted by grown-ups because it gives them a means to control children.

What do you think will happen when the children become grown-ups?

They will teach their kids to be honest, because they will want to control their own kids.

You are almost there, comrade. The grown-ups who were once children...

We all were, ahem.

Once the children grow up and are freed from their guardians who could punish you for lying, they have little incentive to stay honest, besides their moral belief in honesty.

We discard all the virtues that we were taught to strive for, because being bad has different consequences now.

I wouldn't say 'all,' but we certainly gain the freedom to pick and choose as we please. Naturally, it means that almost everyone would become more self-centered than s/he has been. In other words, we begin switching our identity from the intimidated to the intimidating.

Isn't it manifested in the revolutionary spirits among the youth?

Yes. The transition period is very fertile, because the sentiments of the intimidated are still fresh in our memory, but we have just gained the mental and the physical strengths to be the intimidating. I think that is why movements or protests that are started by the youth have wide appeal.

For their earnestness, compassion, passion... and naïvité. We can't deny that they are more inspiring, identifiable and photogenic, compared to retirees who take to the streets to protest cuts in pensions.

May of 1968, the Velvet Revolution, the Tiananmen Square...

Are you shivering?

We talked how we are influenced by the people around us, especially our seniors, but we tend to forget that it means that we influence the people around us in turn.

I am 'I' for myself, but I am 'you' for you.

I continue to be bothered by people who adjust their attitude depending on whom they face. It looks awfully absurd when you see it happening in a split second with the subjects within their earshot.

Obsequious to the one who can wield power over you, and oppressive to the other over whom you can wield power. Isn't this one of the typical patterns?

Some minor changes are natural and even required, but the change that you described comes from the desire to be favored by the powerful. Put differently, this person is hoping that fairness be misinterpreted to her/his advantage.

How is this related to our influencing the people around us?

Our attitude and reactions vary depending on whom we are with. The converse is also true. How we are perceived is a factor in how a person behaves toward us, or we are determinants in who they are.

But it doesn't mean that we can remake any person.

The irony is that, while we cannot escape changes in us caused by our environment, we cannot change our very personality however hard we or others may try.

Excepting unusually traumatic experiences...

I have seen many persons change their attitude toward me after having learned how I am, but they revert to their old attitude when they are not paying enough attention. Certainly, they exhibit their original self as much as it is allowed by the occasion and by the person that they interact with.

We can't help being changed on the surface, but we can't change the core. Well, it can be both good and bad.

True, although we often focus on our powerlessness to change the bad traits of others... Anyway, we forget that much of our feedback is of the kind that enhances what we find unattractive.

Are we so perverse?

Take an example of a dog. Effective training would mean: to be very affectionate toward her and reward with treats when she does something good, and to ignore her call for attention when she does something bad or wrong.

Instead, we tend to scold her severely for misbehaving. It may well result in fear, anger, or resentment.

We are stingy on words of encouragement and rewards, too. The same principle applies to human beings. We complain about the stupidity, the ineffectiveness, and the destructiveness of politicians, but lately, I have come to think that it is our fault to a great extent.

Comrade, I have had nothing to do with the quality of brains possessed by Sarko, Silvio, Jong-Il, Robert...

Politicians, if they are chosen through elections, would do anything to be elected. If elected, they would do anything to be re-elected. If there is no prospect for re-election, they would do anything to leave their legacy.

That is when they start thinking what they can do so that the later generations would recognize them as great politicians.

Before then, they are at the mercy of the electorate.

We as voters are supposed to have enormous power, but it doesn't feel that way.

My theory is that we have allowed the incompetent ones to flourish by electing them.

But what if I did not vote for that particular dumbo?

They are smart at least when it comes to election. If we bought their rhetoric, it's our fault.

I told you, I did not write that name on the ballot paper! It must have been my next door neighbor...

I acknowledge that there is difficulty here. You may be well educated and well informed, but if the rest is ill educated and ill informed, the manipulative one would be chosen.

It happens in many countries around the world, from developing to developed. For example, in order to attract the rural votes, politicians distribute food and cash, and promise pork barrel projects, agricultural subsidies, and so on.

I maintain, however, that if the electorate is sophisticated, so would be the politicians and their politics. In fact, I believe that it is the only way to improve the way the world is governed.

Tell me, when was the last time you attended the town meeting.

... I had hopes in direct democracy, but I am no longer certain. I read that five cantons in Switzerland have a female majority among the legislators.

Considering the fact that women were granted suffrage in 1971, isn't that great news?

One canton's self-analysis is that people are so disillusioned by politics that there is no more prestige in becoming a legislator with low pay at the canton level. Men with ambition have fled to other professions. Most locals don't even know that they have more female legislators than male ones.

I just hope that we do not have to wait for another worldwide calamity before we effectively re-engage ourselves in politics.

I hope so, too, but nothing is more effective than a war to make us realize that politics matters to our lives.

Not just any war, but ones that seriously interrupt our daily lives. Bombs, utility disruption, food and material shortage, and you, your family members or friends sent to the front...

Global warming wouldn't do. It is a slower process and its causes and effects can be disputed more easily.

I have an idea! Let's secretly call the Martians and ask them to threaten us with imminent attacks.

The Insidious timelessness of the pee-word

I shouldn't have waited this long. It's inexusable...

I'm only three minutes and twenty seconds late and you're complaining?

According to my watch, it's four minutes or more.

You should get a watch that comes with a second hand, and be a bit more patient.

I bet your mother told you to be patient when you were growing up. But hasn't her advice led you to calamities?

Let me see... Once I had been too patient and found myself standing in a puddle of slightly colored and faintly steaming water. First it was nice and warm, but quickly turned soggy and cold. It's a bad idea to delay going to the toilet anyway. Your logic is a fallacy of accident.

Did your father ever tell you that the last piece of a cake is the biggest?

If it is a proverb, I've never heard of it. Besides, it sounds so untrue. If the biggest is left, it is most likely because nobody really wanted the cake to start with.

You see, we all think patience is a virtue, but it has an insidious side. Many people could not quite see what was to take place when Adolf Hitler came into power. Those who exercised patience and stayed put, especially the Jewish, suffered the most.

Patience is inappropriate in certain situations. Is this your point?

Not only that, but it is also used as a trick to raise false hope.

Comrade, your language reeks of perniciousness today.

Well, that is what patience is mostly about.

There are many satirical works about penny-pinching---"The Miser/L'Avare" by Molière comes to my mind first---but not about patience.

"Waiting for Godot/En attendant Godot" by Samuel Beckett is open to various interpretations, but as far as I am concerned, it is not about patience paving the path to the desired state in life.

Are you sure that patience is so bad? If you are facing a child, aged six, who is frustrated that he cannot swim as far as he wishes to, isn't it good to tell him to be patient?

When he turns eighteen or so, he would be able to swim as far as he could in his life. But that is based on a relatively safe assumption that he would grow up normally.

If it were an eighty-six year old, it would indeed be inappropriate to suggest patience. In fact, there wouldn't be anything you can say to or do for him, but to share the sadness that the stretch that he covered today will be the best ever compared to what he would be able to do in the future.

Patience is not for all ages. It makes most sense when you know that external factors are evolving in your favor and that they are beyond your control.

Like physiological maturity in the case of six-year old swimmer.

Unfortunately, the world is replete with cases of other types.

Tell me what they are.

We have already discussed one type in which external factors are beyond your control and they become less favorable over time.

The old man and the sea...

Another type is that the normal set of external factors become unfavorable over time, but they could be overcome.

I suppose that is not by simple waiting.

It requires a set of abnormal external factors---called luck---and/or hard work during an extended period of time.

Luck is beyond our control by definition, so it may not be out of line to exercise patience and wait for the Goddess of Destiny to turn to you and smile.

Yes and no. Sometimes you can sniff where luck could be found and deliberately place yourself there. Some other times, you have to be able to recognize luck as such when it comes around.

The problem with patience stems from our equating it to picking our nose and waiting, then?

Or, to simple repetition of our routine. For example, strengthening of certain muscles would be most effective with a changing menu of workouts. Plus, it is usually beneficial to try something that is slightly beyond your capability. The same applies for anything mental, too.

When we train on a higher level, we can be confident about one level lower to ourselves and about two levels lower to others.

In short, when the normal set of external factors become unfavorable over time, they could be overcome with luck and/or effective activities.

Put differently, the identification of those 'effective activities' is the crux of the problem.

Bravo, comrade. Even the six-year old must keep on swimming regularly and try his best all the time to be able to cover a long stretch in the future. If he doesn't and gets up on his eighteenth birthday thinking that he can cross the Strait of Dover in the afternoon, he would be in for a major disappointment.

I have been taught to be patient, as you guessed correctly, but not what I should be doing in the meantime.

Waiting would be a good idea when we are stranded in the middle of nowhere and we know that the next available transportation will be arriving in three hours and eighteen minutes. However, it is not the best idea.

What about reading a book or listening to music for three hours and seventeen minutes, and reserving the last minute for packing up and getting ready for boarding a rickshaw, sleigh, motor bike, bus, jeep, canoe, 470, submarine, airplane, helicopter, balloon, zeppelin, or space shuttle?

No, still not the best strategy.

Should we hatch a plot against the cause which made us stranded?

Not exactly. We should seriously think what we could do in case the expected transportation does not appear in three hours and eighteen minutes.

We tend to think that patience is to wait, and hence, to let time pass by. But that interpretation may turn out not to be helpful even in the simplest case as transportation.

Yet, people who advise you to be patient usually do not tell you that you should continue to strive for obtaining a better grasp of the situation that you are in and be on the lookout for its actual and possible changes.

After all, if circumstances change, staying put is seldom wise.

A person who is unhappy because of unfulfilled goals and wishes is often counseled to be patient. But if it is not accompanied by what s/he should be doing in the meantime, it is equivalent to advising her/him to accept things as they are. One of its hideous effects is to raise hope in the person that s/he would attain her/his goal without doing anything in particular.

"Be patient, and you will get there."

Which is nonsense in most instances. You should not be repeating what you have been doing, because it has not led to achievement of your goal, and that is why you are unhappy. In most cases, you have to change your strategy, or at least you need to become more vigilant about monitoring the state of parameters that are important in attaining your goal.

But they never tell you such things...

I think talking about patience is a convenient way to make a whining person shut up.

I'm afraid many people resort to what you call a trick.

Patience is insidious because it makes us hopeful when there is no concrete reason to be.

We are happier, because we have become hopeful without realizing that it is unwarranted, and the person who told us about patience is also happier, because we stopped complaining...

Persistence is almost as bad, but marginally better for not urging passivity as much.

Comrade, I think that's simply your personal preference of words, just as you prefer 'perceptive' over 'sensitive.'

It could be even more damaging when we are patient without being told to be so.

More?

Any belief can be quite tenacious.

What is wrong with that?

I am disappointed that you haven't see through, comrade... Because patience is plain passiveness in most cases, we are exposed to great danger of becoming comfortable with the situation that we earlier wished to escape from.

Patience tells us to close our eyes half way to weather out the storm.

The key is to keep our eyes half open, but we can get too good at not seeing the brutal reality.

Ah, it's the ostrich in us...

If we manage to maintain dignity in a wretched environment, naturally our desire to flee from it is tamed. That is the hidden, but huge, cost of successfully living through the undesirable circumstances.

We become so good at handling them that they are elevated from the status of undesirable.

That happens without our knowing and remains so for some of us for the rest of our lives.

Doesn't it mean that they find contentment in life and come to terms with what they are given?

We could say that they have turned into true ostriches, and eventually forgot that they were something else earlier in their lives with their heads out of the hole in the ground.

Well, they're lucky that nobody has poked their butt.

Some do get that poking one day, forced to take their heads out of the hole, and experience the horrible realization that the time spent with patience was not time spent to achieve their goals.

It's not after a week or a month that happens. It can take years, right?

Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.

Half past twelve. How the years have gone by. Constantine Cavafy's "Since Nine O'Clock"...

People with belief in plain patience have nobody to turn to, but themselves to blame for their unhappiness.

It's because they don't examine their plight carefully, never give serious thoughts to what could be the best possible action for fulfilling their goals or utilizing their precious time... They fall asleep, in a way.

As I told you, some never wake up but others do. Patience is hideous---first, it gives us false hope, and then, it gradually makes us forget what we aimed for. If we happen to be jolted out of that lukewarm water slowly reaching the boiling point to kill us, we face the terrible fact that an enormous amount of time has passed, with little action on our part to obtain what we wanted in our lives. And during that time, the external factors have turned even less conducive for reaching our goals.

Comrade... you look awfully pale... I'd say like a ghost.

It can well happen to those who think they know very well that they can get used to almost anything and must guard themselves against that process, who think they know the finiteness of their existence...

... Let me treat you to a glass of Médoc.

Isn't it one of the tricks to avert our eyes from what is in front of us?

It's not la Baie des Anges that we are overlooking, but you shouldn't spoil my gesture which is meant to help ease your self-reproach, you know...

Signs of maturity (or lack thereof)

It's that time of the year, the school has started again.

New encounters, new subjects, new classrooms... always a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

I happened to read a piece of advice for teachers the other day. It said that if you are a teacher, you should never talk negatively about your predecessor.

Such as, "No? You guys didn't cover the nine essential nutrients for Martians last year? That can't be! ... All right, I will prepare an extra handout on that subject and distribute it next time. It's very, very important."

With eyebrow knitted and eyes squinted... The article said that from then on the students would start making claims that the previous instructor skipped the topic whatever it may be.

Including the ones that they had been taught.

I hereby confess that I committed a crime that is similar in nature in the past.

I am shocked!

It is again to my disadvantage to be endowed with good memory and a strong will to be impartial... Almost all of us are guilty of the same, but many conveniently are unconscious or forget about it.

So much for excuses. Let's hear what you have done.

When the school year started, we had a new teacher. She was a substitute until the regular hire came back from her maternity leave.

That's not unusual.

We knew neither instructor before. When the term was over for the fill-in and we got to know the regular instructor, we found out that we liked the substitute much better. We talked nostalgically how nice and good she was. One day, I showed my exam to my parents and said that I would have gotten a perfect grade had it been the former teacher.

It's a very flimsy excuse, comrade.

The scary thing is that I believed in it. All of my classmates were of the same opinion. So, when my parents told me that my explanation for the grade was not a good one, I told them that everyone in the class thought the same.

Yes, yes, that familiar "everyone," which can mean a handful of persons.

They replied that we would be saying the same had the regular been the substitute, and the substitute the regular.

It was not about their teaching methods or even personality, but about the role that they assumed.

I was very much surprised by their take on the event, of course.

Did you believe it?

I didn't dismiss it. I remembered it and wondered how that could be. Although I do not recall whether we claimed we had not been taught something we should have, I have a vague feeling that I participated in that kind of collective rewriting of history with my classmates. I think we knew that our claim might not have been true, but after some time, we simply believed in the revised "facts."

Hmmm... we as adults engage in acts of the same genre to more disastrous results.

People who deny all sorts of atrocities, such as genocides, fit that description.

They must have started their training early in their lives.

My recent discovery is that it happens on a smaller scale, too. Some people truly believe in what I think is grossly distorted versions of events. When I confront them, they are adamant that their version is true.

They must be thinking the same about you.

How come that they always come out unambiguously favorable in their stories?

Whereas you do not in your versions?

I know that it's not quite tight, but I claim that it is a proof that I am less biased than they are.

If your argument holds, some people may make themselves appear only partially guilty when they are wholly so, and claim that their take on the event is the true one.

The lack of impartiality in this world is mind boggling. What is even more flabbergasting is that the ones who genuinely believe in their distorted, self-serving history more than often win in the end. At least, they never lose thanks to their single-minded tenacity.

Blessed are the believers...

Back to my memories from school years, we once had a teacher trainee whom we liked very much because she was a lot closer in age. She had big sunglasses and boyfriend sweaters on. Her hair was adult and feminine. She radiated youthful confidence. In sum, she was awfully cool.

Everybody liked her, I bet.

Yes, until I was told to stop chitchatting and pay attention to her lecture.

Aha...

When some students got together and talked about how cool and effective in teaching she was, I snorted and said I wasn't sure. Then one in the circle said, "You changed your mind, because you were told to be quiet.''

There's no denying that it's a very good point.

I was shocked, because I realized then that it was true. The teacher trainee was no different before and after her telling me to be quiet, but I allowed myself to be biased against her in aspects that had little to do with her telling me so.

Don't you think maturity is founded on the separation of our private impressions of and feelings about persons from our judgments of their attributes?

You certainly can say that again. Professionalism is a kind of maturity that pertains to a subset of our activities. What puzzles me is that there seems to be little recognition of that very important principle.

You shouldn't make such a universal statement. It's your little living and working environment that you are talking about.

There is basic courtesy that should be observed regardless of our feelings toward that person.

We talked along this line some time ago.

I recently discovered that for people...

In your little environment, ahem.

All right, in my teeny-weeny environment, enforcement of rules are subject to how much positive feelings the enforcer has about the subjects.

"According to the official schedule, it is your turn to do this not-so-fun job, but okay, I know you are busy, so I will do it for you." That kind of a thing?

I would say so if the person is under pressure, although s/he has not been slacking off, and that to every such person.

People around you are totally confused because you help whom you like and don't like in the same way.

There are times when I want the people that I like to be strictly rule-abiding with me, although there are not many who defy rules and whom I like.

If I recall well, the willingness to be considerate and courteous is not only related to the feelings that we have for the persons involved, but also how repairable the relationships are with those people.

For some, the desire to go by the accepted rules is proportional to the fragility of relationships that they have with the parties involved. In extreme cases, they would go along with anything if they see that the person who is in front needs to be made happy.

Comrade, your hands are trembling with anger...

I tell you, it's total breakdown of communication! You would think that you have gotten an okay to something, only to learn later that it was a no, for example. It creates an anarchic and chaotic world. We have rules and laws precisely so as to be fair and predictable when we make important judgments.

You would doubt whether such persons have any principle.

It's balls that they don't have.

Hush, comrade.

Should I say instead that the ones that they have are shriveled up and about to fall off? They fail to understand that liking a person should neither be necessary nor sufficient to be ethical with her/him. Similarly, we do not have to pretend that we like someone in order to act ethically toward that person. If we do, it would be...

Comes your favorite word of the season, right? The one that starts with an 'h' and ends with a 'y'? There's a 'p' in it, a 'c' in it...

When people turn chummy because they want me to do something for them, I feel as if they were trying a cheap trick on me. If it is in my power to do it and if I see it necessary and reasonable, I would. It has no relation with whether I like her/him or not!

They are again totally confused, because they were nice to you and you agreed to carry out the task, but you look as if you were about to blow fire out of your mouth to scorch them.

The same people think that if they shower me with praises I would become fond of them.

Of course, they shouldn't lie.

They have absolutely no idea that they are showing the ends of their diapers as they walk around...

Anything and anybody interesting

All of us are forever in search of something interesting.

Are you sure? I know some people who are content that today is almost exactly the same as yesterday. They will be unhappy if tomorrow turns out to be dramatically different from today. They are satisfied with little variation in the people that they see, the food that they eat, the clothes that they wear, the work and the entertainment that they engage in.

They do allow well-scripted blips in life. In fact, they need them, because they have an idea of normal course of events and wish to follow it: schooling, employment, marriage, children---and their schooling, employment and marriage. And finally, retirement.

They know the major events, and accept them as they are. Those aside, life is a quiet, long river.

Don't you think they make great monogamists?

They ought to, but even they are sometimes overtaken by the biological urge to let their own genes dominate over others'.

Aha, so that is why Mr. Nextdoor who looks so sedate and boring one day runs away with his secretary who is half his age, abandoning his wife of twenty years, children and an Alaskan Husky...

Let's say that many of Mr. Nextdoor toy with a similar idea and are ready to take off as soon as they find a willing accomplice.

Most simply cannot fulfill the crucial requirement of finding that mate for lack of what they can offer. That is, the privilege is available almost exclusively to the rich and the powerful. Conveniently, they are the ones who have stronger desire to have more mates. Their main motive in life is to control as much as possible.

In other words, there are several reasons why people want different partners. One is purely biological. Some others are psychological: the need to have diversity in life and the desire to conquer.

Many also want to prove to the world that they can attract people, and for some, that desire becomes stronger as they age. Of course, the younger the partner, the better. I understand the mechanism behind, but I can't say that it's fun to watch the process or the result.

Politicians are characterized by their excessive wish to be in charge of the world; they are endowed with above-the-norm desire to control people, including those who could be their sexual mates.

It is ironic, because their lives are more in the public domain than others', and they risk losing the very source of their power by fulfilling the urge to attract and conquer mates.

It looks like the stacks are squarely against monogamy, both biologically and psychologically.

An agreed and fixed partnership is indispensable for child rearing, but that only says anything long-term would suffice and does not exclude polygamy and polyandry.

Is there any reason why we should adhere to monogamy?

If the parties involved had made an agreement to a monogamous relationship, they are morally obliged to remain committed to each other. The question is: what are the grounds for agreeing to such a relationship in the first place.

Especially if you declare not to conceive and/or rear children...

The only reason that I can think of is to avoid chaos in this world. People may make such declarations, but they may well change their minds once in a relationship.

The problem then would be if one wants a monogamous union for the child and the other doesn't.

Keeping partnerships monogamous means keeping it simple, and it helps when it comes to dissolution. Usually partnerships entail division in labor, and the fruits of that labor must be divided in a fair manner. If there are many people involved and if it is unclear who they are, we would be spending quite a bit of resources on this issue. Termination of partnerships are usually unhappy moments and people become quite passionate about obtaining their fair share.

So, the argument for monogamy is minimization of chaos and bickering... It's a rather weak one, isn't it?

We started our conversation today about amusing ourselves. Can you describe what is interesting to you, by the way?

Anything that stimulates my mind and senses.

Do you know what does so?

Anything that is beyond what I have experienced so far.

We know that we don't appreciate just about anything. We also like to be surprised by being pushed beyond our boundaries, and if you have not been aware of where the boundaries lie, all the better.

Not all, but many of us, you mean.

Enlarging your territory of appreciation happens easily when you are not conscious of your limits. You are presented by something that you have never experienced, and only when you begin to appreciate it, you realize that your sense of appreciation had been more limited earlier.

Because you are unaware of your limits, you don't reject outright what is in front of you.

Precisely. The rewards are larger when you do not know at first how the new experience fits in your world.

Which further means that we cannot describe what would greatly pique our interest.

Brilliant, comrade.

It's just that I happened to say what you had in mind, I know...

It's the same with attractiveness of a person. If you meet someone whom you know you wouldn't like, you would not make attempts to see her/him again, unless, of course, it is under some unavoidable circumstances.

Such as when s/he happens to be your boss, right?

If the person is different from those that you have known, but if you do not know how to place her/him in your world, you would not avoid her/him. And if you come to appreciate that person, you like her/him more than you would a person who belongs to your group.

Let's say that it is a possibility. The attraction may become strong, but it can wane quickly, too. After all, s/he is from a different universe.

If we succeed in making that other universe ours, we feel the relationship is rewarding. If that universe happens to be something that contributes to your positive image, the attraction can be quite strong.

A person who did not know anything about opera learns to appreciate it and acquires knowledge in that domain, for example.

Many of us are in need of being exposed to something new, and one person cannot be the gateway to a new territory all the time.

Just as one author cannot provide a reader with all the variety s/he needs in reading?

I have a wonderful cookbook that contains hundreds of recipes from all over the world. Anything from the book comes out great, but I get bored if I cook from it all the time. I get the urge to try something else, something seen through a different pair of eyes.

Isn't that another thumb down for monogamy as you implied last time?

Alas, you are right. And you know, after a period of infidelity, so to speak, I go back to that reliable cookbook.

Almost everything we considered seems to point in the direction of the graveyard for monogamous relationships, but I feel we should try our best to sustain it.

Why?

In order to avoid chaos and to use our resources for something more productive than finding an acceptable separation scheme for partners, as you said.

Well done, comrade. In my opinion, staying attractive is an important everyday goal, in particular vis-à-vis people whom we spend a bulk of our time with. The more often we see a person, the more likely that we bore her/him and vice versa. And, the more important that we do not do so, because we have to see her/him anyway.

What can I say... The most important turns out to be the most difficult.

If we are to keep the monogamous system, we need to constantly renew ourselves. We have to evolve.

But you said there are some people who like to have the same food every single day.

Yes, so here is already a source of friction for a couple. It sometimes happens that one is an evolving type and the other is not. Even if both are evolving types, it could be that their interests and outlooks on life diverge. I know a person who had been very much into opera, but it gradually ceased to move him. He now listens only to bluegrass music and let go of his massive opera recording collection.

You have been living with Plácido Domingo, and one day you realize you want to live with Bill Monroe instead? It's... it's scandalous!

That can happen, you know. We all need to evolve to keep the attention of others, especially the attention of those who are important to you, while retaining the aspects that make you likable and attractive to them.

I'd say it's like a store. In order to have customers visit and spend some money at regular and frequent intervals, you need a set of staples that make you reliable as well as something new for a nice surprise.

That is true if there are more stores than necessary for biological survival. We talked about our desire to have both the familiar and the unfamiliar some time ago. The problem here is how to change yourself in a way that is interesting to your partner and preferably to other friends and family members as well.

Obviously, you can't be a Kiri Te Kanawa married to a Plácido Domingo and change your career into one of a country singer's.

Unless he decides to be a Del McCoury at the same time...

Didn't you say that when you are forced to change in the most unexpected direction, your attraction to that person is the biggest?

I did imply so. But for that, you have to perceive that change as positive or interesting. Otherwise, it would not work. So, our question is again: what do we mean by interesting?

Didn't we agree that it is beyond description by definition? But some idea about it is necessary so that we know how to be interesting or find what is interesting.

Therefore, there is nothing but serendipity that we can rely on for this matter.

What about recommendations by others?

I'm sure you have experienced disappointments when you read books recommended by friends, although they also liked the books that you liked.

That's more of a rule than an exception, I'm afraid.

Or, a friend of a friend for some reason does not become your friend.

That happens, too.

Think about the effectiveness of the algorithms that churn out recommended items based on your previous purchases.

Once I ordered on behalf of a friend a black cape with special pockets which double as sleeping bags for bats, and ever since I have been receiving promotional messages for coffin openers, garlic detectors and so on.

And remember, the bigger the surprise of the good kind, the bigger the attraction.

What is your concluding message for monogamists?

Stay vigilantly hopeful! Boredom kills you, your mate and the relationship! Surprise is a double-edged sword, but...

I don't know if it is necessary to raise your fist, comrade... But hey, shall we make socialist-art posters with those slogans? I have a good example. Look, "Hasta la victoria siempre."

To victory, always!

Be nice, or be bored

It has occurred to me lately how small our mental worlds are.

Isn't that another case of hasty generalization? You should know by now that the world is inhabited by people quite different from you.

I am very aware of that, but many others do not seem to be. Quite a few think I know what they are thinking without their telling me. The only opportunity to find out their thoughts is when I happen to do something they don't want me to.

The usual ritual for such occasions is to be showered with scolding, accusation, name calling, saliva, bits of food that have been stuck between their teeth...

Anyway, even the great minds are rather small.

The statement is as meaningless as saying that even the small minds are great. In fact the two may mean the same.

We occasionally witness children show understanding of the world that is more encompassing or deeper than we expect. The same happens with people who are mentally ill or retarded. This is what is meant by small minds being big.

Their levels of understanding in different areas are uneven compared to an average adult, and we tend to think that their overall comprehension of the world is low.

Oftentimes they do not have the means to express what they understand, so we assume that they do not know or understand.

Tyranny of verbalization...

That is how the "civilized" world formed the view of the "primitive" world, by the way. When the West discovered what is outside world to them, it was behind in terms of weaponry and did not share the language and mode of communication. Hence, they thought they found savage beings.

It goes to show the importance of being able to attack physically and verbally. Without them, we cannot preserve our dignity.

I maintain that the level of civilization is measured by how much energy we devote to what is not strictly necessary for biological survival and by how we tame and tweak our animal instincts. They could make us nasty in situations which are not life threatening and hence unnecessary to be so.

But a civilization of higher level can be wiped out by one of lower level if the latter happens to be equipped by superior means of destruction.

Think about Vasco da Gama's barbarism against Calicut. He attacked the city when his demand to expel the Muslims was denied. Of course, Calicut must have had economic and political reasons to accommodate people of different religions, but he tried to destroy peace and commercial wealth with brutal force.

The Portuguese succeeded, as evidenced by the cities that they colonized along the coast.

Ranking various civilizations would be tricky, but I think we can say that the ones that spend more of its resources for activities beyond pure survival are more humane.

What about the people who had been labeled "primitive"? They spend more time and energy to survive compared to the people who labeled them so, but they tend to have more hands-on knowledge about nature and live in much better harmony with it. Isn't that a civilization of a better kind, at least in terms of taking care of the environment?

Very true... What if I say a civilization which spends less of its resources for destruction of any sort is preferred?

What about racial segregation? For people who are happy with it would think that they live in a peaceful world and that anti-segregationists are trouble-mongers, even terrorists.

True again. But segregationism is based on the idea that human beings should be conferred with different sets of rights and that the biological features determine which set. The anti-segregationists are for a society that has nothing to do with such erroneous idea of human beings.

But then, the segregationists would say that keeping the superior apart from the inferior is the better for the society as a whole.

The anti-segregationists would retort that the superiority is the result of unfair distribution of society's resources.

The segregationists would say that it is fair because the superior do the important work and thus deserve more.

And the anti-segregationists would say that because of such patterns of redistribution the inferior lack education, opportunities, etc. and are locked into menial jobs.

And the segregationists would demand the anti-segregationists to name a person of the inferior kind who is worth giving up some of what they have.

The named person may well fail to live up to expectations, and...

We'll hear remarks like, "You see, I told you, they're good for nothing."

The problem here is mistaking what has been caused by external factors as something inherent.

But then, we hear lines such as, "It's because they lack will that they cannot go beyond their lot."

It's not fair to have to exert much more effort to achieve the same goal, just because your biological features are less favored by people in power.

They would say, "Nothing is fair in this world."

We would point out that they did not want redistribution of wealth because it is not fair. Hence, they are contradicting themselves.

Comrade, the anti-segregationists won!

I hope so... Getting back to the importance of being capable to destroy physically, that is why nations still build up weapons. If you don't want others to attack you, you have to show that you can attack them.

Preferably better than they are able to.

Think about what we can do with all the money that we spend on destroying each other or trying to do so. We even attempt to restore something after destroying it.

The Iraq War, for example. I know that some people say the bad was destroyed and the good is to be restored, but there is no denying that it is physical destruction followed by resuscitation.

Do you think we would ever overcome the lack of goodwill and trust that permeates our world?

We first need to do away with hypocrisy that surrounds it.

Yes, hypocrisy, my favorite word of the moment! How can you preach others to act with goodwill and trust when you are not doing so yourself?

Comrade, I know that you are envisioning someone, but calm down, he is not with us here, and besides, we are talking about nations.

Anyway, it is important to demonstrate our capacity for physical attacks, but so is our ability to threaten in words.

The problem here is that verbosity is often taken as a sign of intelligence...

As I pointed out earlier, if you don't have the means to express your complicated thoughts, you may be taken as an idiot.

In a way, that's not so odd, because if you know what your thoughts are, you should be able to communicate it.

Precisely. And we don't know many of our thoughts.

Are you sure about that?

I am. I would not say all, but many of malicious acts originate from base emotions and thoughts which we are not so conscious about.

Such as, "I don't like her/him, and I am going to make her/his life miserable," "I am jealous, and I want her/him to be even more jealous," "Let her/him know who is the boss," "I am very unhappy, and therefore, I am going to take it out on her/him," ...

Those are the emotions and thoughts behind the acts, but not so well articulated in our minds. Most people would deny that it was what they were feeling or thinking. I would say verbalization is the first step toward being able to analyze our emotions and thoughts and to decide whether we should carry out actions based on them.

Put differently, ethical behavior is not possible without consciousness.

I agree with qualification. It is possible to be disciplined so that we have stock reactions that are ethical. However, we may not be able to match the situation that we face with what is in our instruction book. Moreover, some situations we encounter may not be in it. It means that we need the ability to analyze and arrive at what we think is appropriate reaction. For that, we need at least some consciousness of what we are feeling, thinking and doing. This is not to say that reactions that come to us unconsciously are useless.

You mean it is useful to touch the tip of your nose with your thumb and wiggle your hand?

Unconscious acts do not involve questioning and they come to us as if they were reflex. That is, we engage in them with very little effort. It is natural, built-in, and thus, consumes very little energy. Different cultures have different sets of such autonomous responses. That is why many of us marvel at people in various countries dealing smoothly with what we consider difficult situations.

Could we say that articulation in words is required for out-of-the-box situations, but it is taxing on our minds?

I think so. Good examples of that may be religious converts. They change their religion from one that they grew up with into another which they decide to adopt consciously later in their lives. What the first religion taught them comes to them more easily, and they tend to fight it off by saying out loud the tenets of the newly embraced religion. We can tell that they are trying hard. Since they have to be explicit about the second one, they are in great danger of being hypocrite.

Comrade, your eyes are shining with anger...

It's hard to have too good examples around, you know... Let's talk about great minds being limited.

You have to admit that you are jealous.

I admit that I am, but that does not make the statement false.

... True...

Remember, even Uncle Isaac said that he was merely standing on the shoulder of the giants.

But he was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian. Many consider him to be one of the greatest minds in history!

Okay, that was not a very good example. But I have been noticing lately that usually an artist has one theme, especially writers. They have one truly good work, and the rest is of a similar theme and/or so-so in quality.

What about writers like Uncle Leo?

He has two great works, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," both of which are about love and family life in the Russian upper crust.

Did you expect him to write about an auntie practicing Vodou in Haiti or about the Andromeda Galaxy at war with the Tirangulum Galaxy?

No, it was good that he wrote what he knew best. My point is that we cannot live on Tolstoy alone, just like we cannot on Pirozhki alone.

We can change the filling. In fact, most people do live on Pirozhki alone and with various fillings, because they read only a handful of authors each of whom produces based on one formula.

In a way, authors have to have a formula which can be more kindly called style. For most artists, we can recognize whose work it is from its 'style.' That means they all have a 'formula.' But even people who like repetitive story lines---or motifs in general---want some variation.

Otherwise, they can read the same story or look at the same painting over and over again and be satisfied.

Readers who are fond of a certain formula want several formulas with slight differences. The catch is that one author cannot produce those small variations to satisfy a reader.

One reader needs more than one author, then.

Yes, even if the reader is happy to have some repetition. In other words, we are capable of absorbing much more than we as individuals can produce. A person owes to more than one another person to satisfy her/his cerebral needs. That is true not only in writing, but also in other arts. It is also true for human relationships.

Hurray, here is an incentive to be nice to many others!

It is a motivation for infidelity, comrade...

The Default love is faulty

You are here again in two weeks! You must have something that you need to complain urgently.

Wrong, comrade. It is nothing negative, but positive. I am here today to declare everlasting love.

If it were someone else, my eyes would be wide open and my ears pricked up. But it's none other than you who is to make such a declaration. I would be a complete fool if I do not sense something rather fishy...

Again wrong. It's really about true love, undying love. It's eternal, it's foreveeeeerrrr!

Ah, is it about you and your athlete's foot?

Neither am I in a love relationship with any fungus nor suffer from athlete's foot!

Hmmm, let me see... could it be related to your pessimism?

What can I say, you've come rather close. It's myself.

You came here today to declare undying love for... yourself?

That's right.

I was afraid that even gods might have given up on you. At last you found someone who would love you forever!

Mind you, I am not confessing my narcissism or self-righteousness.

Oh, tell me about it. How does self love differ from those two, if at all?

Narcissism is blind love for oneself, usually displayed in public. It implicitly urges others to love her/him as much as s/he does her/himself. Narcissistic people have their reasons why they consider themselves superior, but in most cases, they are not justified in the eyes of others. They cherish their attributes simply because they are theirs.

Such people are unaware that it is the ownership of the attributes that is playing a big role in their feelings.

Self-righteousness is to consider oneself morally above others. Again, what we forget is that our morality appears superior mostly because it is our morality.

If these are not self love, what is?

I guess it is analogous to true love and fake love.

You mean, narcissism and self-righteousness are wrong kind of love for ourselves, and what you call self love is the right one?

It may appear that I am exhibiting the very behavior that I criticized a second ago, but...

Comrade, I am glad that you realize that. How can you blame others of narcissism and self-righteousness when you have those traits?

Let's put aside for the moment the issue of whether we are qualified to talk about a certain topic.

Critics are often incapable of performing the task that they evaluate, but they do not hesitate to praise or curse as they see fit.

I think it is division of labor, or more precisely, talent. Accomplished artists are not necessarily informed of all the events in their world, or capable of writing and talking about what concerns the senses. The same holds for reporting. A wonderful tennis player is not always a good newscaster for tennis matches.

When it comes to morality and such, isn't it slightly different, because the problem is about how we live and all of us are fully engaged in that activity?

True, we would be hypocrites if we do not practice what we preach, because we are principle actors in our own lives.

Whatever we say about life could be used at some point as a piece of evidence for our hypocrisy, since we are all imperfect.

In other words, none of us can discuss life without being hypocritical. That would greatly inconvenience us, wouldn't it?

What do you suggest?

I think it is possible to talk about it with sincerity.

How so?

To be open to criticisms and be ready to admit mistakes. We should bear in mind that, because we love ourselves so much, a tad more leniency toward others and a bit more severity toward ourselves than we think are best would appear justly balanced to others.

I know what you mean... I have heard the line, "People are selfish, but I'm not," and the like. We are so clear-eyed about others and cloudy-eyed about ourselves.

We shall proceed on the premises that we are capable of discussing earnestly how we should live. We do so while acknowledging that none of us can eliminate all of our hypocrisy, because we are imperfect. Our imperfection in turn does not allow us to be a total hypocrite either.

We have those moments when we think the person who is in front of us is so hypocritical that we want to throw up on him. If we call him a total hypocrite, we will have to admit that we are letting our anger and disgust take over. Too bad, isn't it?

Comrade, you are reading my mind... You must know, then, that the ones who claim to be moral persons are absolutely the worst. They would do anything so that they would appear moral, even by taking advantage of others' distress.

For example?

They would admonish people who are in anguish, anger, sorrow, fear, etc., for those reactions. Further, they may say that immaturity has prevented them from accepting what caused such emotions.

Isn't that lack of compassion?

Yes. It is also hypocrisy on the side of the self-professed moral people, because they preach compassion. In the above case, they are not so much concerned about how to help mollify the emotions, but how to make use of the incident to display what they think is their advanced mentality. Oftentimes, they do so with the tone implying that they themselves are mature enough to accept a similar situation.

Some may not tell the distraught person that s/he is immature on the spot, but later tell why they did not say so then. It comes down to their own maturity.

It's all about themselves, not about the distressed person. It can be pretty condescending, I tell you. I have been subject to many of these, and it is only recently that I realized their self-serving nature.

It shouldn't have taken that long, comrade...

The more self-advertising people are about their honesty, kindness, compassion, and so on, the more hypocritical they are. Isn't that chilling?

That goes by definition. The more you market yourself, the more attention you and the claim receive.

You should have seen me when I was facing this guy who claimed that he was compassionate. Or another who claimed that he was nice. So far, I have not met a person who lived up to a positive characterization of who her/himself was.

We, human beings, do not have the ability to be nice in all senses and that all the time. We should not be congratulatory about ourselves, because it will look ridiculous sooner or later.

Agree. You may say, "Trust me, I will do it," but not "I will do it. I'm a trustworthy person."

It is a matter of generalization, then. We can make a strong claim for one event and act accordingly. As for general statements, we should know that we cannot help violating them. In other words, broad claims make us hypocritical.

It is quite embarrassing when we forget having made such encompassing claims but others remember that we did.

Are you trying to seek your way out of your hypocrisy?

... Getting back to our earlier topic of self love, I think too many of us are self-loathing or self-neglecting.

They are the opposite of narcissism and self-righteousness which you brought up earlier as big problems.

In my mind, they are all related by insecurity in oneself. When we cannot be confident about ourselves, we either hate or neglect ourselves, or try to think and show that we are more than what we are.

Insecurity can be very harmful, but doesn't self love lead to another type of harm, overconfidence and cockiness?

Once again, we should not go to the very extreme. The underlying problem is that we are the ones who have to live with ourselves, but we often forget that. It would be better if we are with someone we like than someone we do not.

Is that why we'd better love ourselves?

Biology has endowed us with the mechanism to think anything that is ours better than others'.

We are already self loving without trying?

Yes, but that love is problematic, because we love whatever we happen to be.

What about self-loathing and self-neglecting people?

For some, the mechanism is suppressed by negative feedback from others. We may say that they are victimized by people who wish to feel secure at the expense of easy preys. Some others think the affection that they receive is insufficient, and loathe or neglect themselves as a way of expressing the frustration. Since they cannot get enough attention for being "good," so to speak, they are unconsciously trying to be "bad."

They adopt the attitude that would correspond to, "You don't like me? I don't either. You don't care about me? I don't either," if articulated.

But in truth they are keenly waiting for someone who would like them or care about them.

We love ourselves, but at the same time we harbor insecurity about who we are.

You know how that works. If you are desperate, you become vulnerable. As with anything innate, the biological urge to love oneself is deep rooted, but inappropriate in situations that are more delicate and complicated than basic survival. It may in fact work to our disadvantage.

Comrade... Tell me, should I love myself or not?

Consider a world in which every member behaves as dictated by their blind, biological love for oneself. It would be quite brutal.

Deep down, we think we are sane and others insane, but those others think they themselves are sane.

It's hard to accept, but all of us are quite loony and unreasonable at times.

Naturally, some are so more often than others, right?

"To love a stranger as oneself, implies the reverse: to love oneself as a stranger."

Simone Weil... Is that why you brought that big mirror with you?

We need to look at ourselves as if we were strangers who are to be nurtured into ideal beings with care and attention. There are too many occasions in which I think, "Only if they knew how they appear to others!"

I fear that the very hypocritical wouldn't notice their hypocrisy, whatever we do.

You're right, I can think of an example or two... or three, or...

Let me hold the mirror for you.

...

... Comrade, your pulse is... weak! You just saw yourself. Your true love, your one and only, remember?