Why perfection is never seen

All of us seek perfection from those around us - our friends, our families, our colleagues and so on. Some of us acknowledge that perfection will not be found, and hence we accept imperfections in those around us. However, our criteria for such forgiveness are often very blurred. There is no consistent framework within while we can put our life experiences.

I will put this article into two sections. The first will deal with the theoretical underpinnings of what I mean to say. The second is the practical application of these theoretical underpinnings. For those of the readers who aren't quite fans of deductive logic, I would suggest that you skip the first section.

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Hence, the sense in which I will be talking about 'perfection' here is not professional perfection, but perfection in our social interactions. Also, the 'framework' that I talk about is deductive logic - the formation of certain exogenously-given premises, and using a small set of fairly axiomatic steps, arriving at a conclusion based on those premises.

Beginning with this framework, the first step is to acknowledge that every human has a different set of premises. While I have said that this is exogenously given, we can qualify it better. I would believe that every human's set of premises is determined by his experiences, and also his reaction to these experiences*. Even if the experiences were the same, the reactions would most probably not. This could happen for several reasons - a person might be constrained in several spaces (especially true of children and women, the elderly, poor individuals, unhealthy people), there might be a 'random' component to any social outcome and that the external environment might not remain constant, such that the outcomes are not the same. While I have used a fair amount of jargon here, the point to be emphasized is simple enough -  no two individuals start with the same set of premises.

Even if we assume that all humans are rational (and I don't see any reason not to) and that they employ the same set of axioms (this is where disagreement is more likely), this will lead to different conclusions. Hence, conflict is inevitable in modern society. Note that we made barely any assumptions here - even the assumption of rationality and uniqueness of axioms is merely intended to show the power of the argument. Relaxing these assumptions will, in fact, further strengthen the argument that I have made. However, I must make a qualification here. Divergence of premises is no reason to assume divergence of conclusions. These conclusions might end of being the same. Here, I diverge from deductive logic in saying that the probability of such an occurrence is low.

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In practice, each one of us falls into several disagreements with our friends and colleagues. Since we do not know what premises/beliefs that lead to a particular action, we take the action itself as a proxy for the belief system. For example, if I convinced my friend to join me for a movie, and then my friend called me up at the last moment to say no, then I do not have perfect information as to what lead my friend to make that particular decision. I would use whatever knowledge I have of the action of his not coming to reach a judgement.

It would seem better that I should rather just acknowledge the lack of information and then move on with life, rather than being miffed with my friend. However, how many of us actually do that? None whatsoever. The reason being that, in practice, perfect information will never be available. Hence, we will never reach a judgement. Even if our friend is actually the bad guy in the picture and keeps repeating his actions, I will never have enough information to indict him, and to take necessary action.

For this reason, such an outcome is never observed. As humans, we all would have certain preferences between certainty and information. The example we have considered in the previous paragraph is one of a person who prefers 100% information. On the other hand, if certainty was the only thing I cared about, then to say that 'life exists on mars' would be the best outcome - since it is 100% sure. However, most of us would be quite uncomfortable with such an assertion. 

We thus choose a point that has both uncertainty and lack of information. This is where our preferences differ. Each one of us would accept different levels of uncertainty (and by corollary, of lack of information) given how much information we have. Hence, this is a matter of preferences.

For this reason, perfection in social relations can never be seen. Even if I personally want to be as rational as possible, I would never be able to be perfectly rational unless I am ready to accept being a weak, indecisive individual who can be taken for a ride by virtually anybody. All of us wouldn't, and this is why perfection is never an outcome in social relations. We all forgive some, and don't forgive some. How much we forgive is given by our own preferences. Our acquaintances will never agree to how much we forgive, because they have different preferences. Hence, conflict will always be present.

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* this is somewhat similar to Karl Marx's dualism in that man's experiences and his response to those experiences form the complete set

Objectivism and Altruism

I just read this article that attacks Ayn Rand's objectivist theory at several levels. As someone who has barely read a quarter of The Fountainhead, I base my understanding of Rand on this (rather biased) article. Click here for reading the article.

Let me not even attempt a critique of Wikipedia claims was Rand's espousal of full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism. For even those with the most cursory knowledge of economics, it is not difficult to disprove such an assertion. There are so many market failures that unregulated capitalism cannot be optimal even in theory. Marx, of course, takes it further - he says that capitalism is a doomed regime that will one day fall under the weight of its own contradictions. In practice, the numerous crises have taught us that capitalism by itself cannot stand. However, trying to critique Rand at this point would end up becoming a lesson in basic economics, which I do not wish to detail here.

It is the second assertion, which I have accidentally dealt with earlier, that I will elucidate a bit here. As I have discussed in my previous article on norms and compliance (click here to read), many kinds of socially optimal behaviour can be made individually optimal using a set of incentives. In fact, according to the Folk Theorem, if an individual is patient enough, then any outcome in which the payoff to the individual is at least as much as his worst-case scenario, can be sustained. Given that a young person would not discount the future heavily, we can abstract away from the details and state that almost any social outcome can be sustained as a Nash equilibrium.

For our purpose of our argument, it is sufficient to say that Rand's argument that only selfish acts can be sustained, is false and myopic. Human society is a society of repeated social interactions. If interaction between any two individuals occurred only once, then Rand would be correct. However, since we need to interact at several times, we need to also consider how our action today would affect the state that will materialise tomorrow. While a more complete discussion can be found in my article I referenced earlier, let me give a simple example. When someone wants to photocopy my notes, then it would be in my selfish interests to not give those notes because the notes provide me with a comparative advantage that will help me score more. Sharing would reduce my comparative advantage. However, I might need notes in the future, and refusal to share notes today might jeopardize my chances of getting them in the future. Hence, the 'altruistic' task of sharing notes today becomes the Nash equilibrium.

Why I put 'altruistic' in quotes is because even this behaviour is selfish in that I still take the cost-and-benefit (to me) approach while deciding whether to share notes or not. However, the key thing to note here is that this selfishness differs from that of Rand in that it has a social context of incentives. In case the societal norms are removed and exchange of notes is made depersonalized (every person uploads his notes voluntarily on a network and others can download it, such that the uploader does not know who is downloading), then cooperation would break down and nobody would share notes. Instead, if anyone who refused to share notes was flogged, then everyone would share notes. The basic point is that seemingly selfish behaviour can also be modified and contained.

Going by my reading of Ms.Bekiempis' article, I can strongly assert that Rand was wrong - selfish behaviour isn't the only sustainable ones. Better outcomes can be sustained, and very often without the need for the Government.

Sufferings Refute Religion?

Back in December 2004, I remember, I was in Kannyakumari on the 25^th, a day before the devastating Tsunami hit the coastal areas and took away so many ‘innocent’ lives. According to our itinerary we were supposed to see the sunrise on the 26^th, but because of the bad weather and the predictions that we might not see the sunrise, we left the place on 25^th. And after that I had only one thing to say, “Thank God! You saved us!” But I wonder why did I say so? Just because I was saved, is it reasonable to thank God? What about those innocent people who lost their lives and above all those who lost the dear ones? They must have thought why God did this to ‘them’ and not others? God is cruel. This leads me to the conclusion that we thank God when he saves us and we curse him in our sufferings. In our happiness we forget him; in our sorrows we curse him!

We doubt the existence of God when we go through extreme pain and sufferings. The God created the universe and that he is the most powerful and has ‘full control’. Then why does he let the innocent suffer? “God doesn’t exist and if he exists why is he so cruel?”- This is what we say in times of pain and suffering. In other words: “Suffering refutes religion”

Recently, Arun Shourie, a former Stephanian has written a book titled- ‘Does he know a mother’s heart?” Arun Shourie has been an economist in the WB and the editor of Indian Express and Times of India. He had a successful career. In this book he talks of his experiences in bringing up his son who is suffering from cerebral palsy (a congenital disorder of childhood which leads to some physical disability.) and his wife suffers from Parkinson’s disease (a disorder of central nervous system). In this book he talks about why there are sufferings if God exists and why God punishes the innocent? But in reality this is not the case. There are sufferings all around, in everyone’s life at some point of time. But what makes Arun Shourie not believe in God or refute religion is the intensity of the suffering that he has gone through and is going through. He is 70, his ‘disabled’ son is 35, his wife is herself suffering with the disease and at this point of time this father worries of who will take care of his son as he exits.

In his book he talks of a situation where a father beats his son, shouts at him, in short inflicts pain and sufferings upon his son (basically referring to his life). Probably this ‘cruel’ father should be prisoned so that the sufferings of child cease. Then Shourie questions: “What if the ‘father’ here is God?”  I don’t have an answer to this but what I would like to say is if ‘the father’ beats the son and shouts at him, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care and love him. In fact he loves him the most and always wants his well-being. He wants him to struggle and win. And so is the case with ‘the father’ of mankind- God. He gives sufferings to his sons so that they can struggle, work hard and go through bad times, for there is joy in good times but a greater joy when good times succeed the bad ones. There are sufferings and those who are strong ultimately receive what I would say “Eternal blessings” Still many people think that God does injustice to some people, but this is not so. I repeat, there are sufferings in every man’s life. Think of the sufferings of those millions of people who are under the shackles of poverty.

I won’t say that you believe in God, for everyone has a different opinion in this matter. What I would say is believe in the ‘cosmic energy’- The energy, the bond that keeps us moving. The energy, that is everywhere in space and even within you. Discover and multiply the cosmic energy, for it keeps everything in order. If God gives us sufferings, he also gives us the strength to overcome them. We need to discover that strength in order to make our lives better.

Change the way you look at things and you will find those things changing!

The Special Ones

A rather impulsive post this is!!

I recall sitting in my school bus one rainy morning last year, looking at the road. We reached Dwarka, and thanks to the water-all-over, vehicles honked more than they moved. I saw a scooty stop, a young pretty lady got off, lifted her daughter from behind, made her wear the Hannah-Montana school bag, and holding her hand, waited for her school cab. The daughter, dressed prim-n-proper, hugged her mom, and said ‘Mujhe school nahin jaana!’ .Oh Gracious! I thought, that was so me (junior version)!!

Having nothing else to do, I continued staring at them. The mother wiped off the baby’s  tears, and promised to make her sweets once she returned. The child, reluctantly, but did, sit in her cab, and waved goodbye. Mommy-dear stood there till the cab was out of sight, and was off on her scooty thereafter.

It brought to mind the fuss I used to create, when forcibly sent to school. I too was promised sweets, told stories on the way, and even dropped to school at times. And now, at the age of 19(well, almost!), I have become a college girl. Blah!! Gone are the days when my maa shopped for me, n dad took me out for a movie. Times have changed, and so have I.

Living in the same house, the only ‘quality time’, we spend together as a family is at dinner. But, deep down, what we know is that we are all bound, by a strong thread, ‘Love’. A feeling, though hardly expressed, it keeps us together. What we forget is expressing it, putting it to words, bringing it to the forefront of our lives.

And this isn’t just about me, but all of us, who find it so difficult to spare a few minutes to tell their parents how special they are. They’ve taught us almost everything, about work and hope; to always do what is right; to remind ourselves what goes eventually comes back, and hence to be true to oneself throughout this journey called ‘life’. So go ahead, take a moment off, give them a hug, and let them know how much they mean to you!!

Till next time……..:)

-Suhani