I Won't Refuse to Disagree

Hey there!! I'm back to doing what i do best, thinking. Thinking about what i think and what people are thinking in general. We are here to discuss a very,"impotent"(read "important"), topic and that is about why people in certain circumstances dont answer some questions thrown at them. They continue with whatever they were doing as if nothing happened and completely ignoring you. Is this another defence mechanism of the ego? or just another way to piss you off? We shall find out.
   So my friend tock learned to play the guitar. From what he tells me, he struggled with the dumb instrument for four long years. And then he told me about his love for the tabla. I asked him why in the first place he went for the guitar instead of the tabla, but he didn't exactly answer my question and started talking about how the first two years were a little not so interesting but then he began to like the instrument. I repeated my question and said that his reply didn't satisfy me. But to this he just kept mum and we continued walking.(This story was cooked up by me so don't bother to find out who tock is!)
   So now the question is why didn't tock answer me? Or to put it in a more gneral sense, what is it that stops people from answering certain queries. Let us look at a few of the mechanisms that I could think of.
   One of the very obvious reasons is that they don't want to answer( believe me when I say its not as obvious as it seems). The answer lies in some fact or event, most probably an undesirable one, that the subject doesn't want to talk about or be reminded of. It could refer to the loss of a loved one or some embarrassing event, or some fact about the subject that the subject refuses to admit because the society has defined that particular thing as bad or "uncool". So if he confirms with the fact then it is going to harm his ego as explained in the uncertainty principle.
   There is another possibility that differs from the first case very minutely. Here the subject acts as if he is really interested in the discussion but can't really come up with an answer because the answer is very blunt and could be taken as rude. This is a very effective tactic, especially in a group discussion where people dont have enough patience to let the subject think for an answer and the question is left unattended in the gush of conversations so that the subject escapes. An example of this is when I was to go out with my friends tick and tock and tick showed up late. I was probing tick with my prompting queries( :D ) when at one point she stopped answering and I was waiting for a reply. After like a few seconds, tock suddenly came up with a different topic( out of the blue!! ) and the conversation took off in another direction and hence tick escaped( you see why I prefer one to one conversations over group discussion). Note that case two differs from case one in that in case one, the subject lets you know by way of their body language and facial expressions that they don't want to answer. I've used this tactic very often myself!!
   We move on to the next mechanism and we shall call it case three. There are mainly two classifications in this case. In the first, I believe the subject is trying to read the interrogator. As in, he wants to find out whether that person is really interested in getting a reply. The whole point of this is that if the person is really so interested, then that guarantees our subject a good audience and a pleasurable sharing experience.
   The second variation of this case is that, the subject is more or less self centered and wanting attention by hinting that everything is not okay. The basic idea is that you are inducing someone to ask about you, which makes you feel desired and important and hence pampers your ego.
   You must note that I have excluded the obvious possibility that your subject is pissed off with something stupid that you did and I bet you don't need any help to figure this out. So with this we come to the end of this discussion and I must thank my friend and classmate srinivasa for inspiring me to think over this topic. I hope and believe that someday this article would be of some use to you. I'm not sure if I agree to the last statement but I surely won't refuse to disagree. Hope that makes my intentions clear ;-)
Later...
Live, Laugh, Love

The Uncertainty Principle

Humans are weird beings. They like being understood but they don't like being studied. It is fascinating to study what makes them act differently when they believe they are being watched. Not surprisingly, most of the behavioral patterns that they exhibit are deeply rooted in the ego. A new born baby is more of an observer. It's actions are driven mostly by its physical needs. As it grows, it learns more about the world around it and it links certain feelings objects depending on how they matter to him in terms of satisfaction of his needs. As for example , it starts to link the feeling of joy with the presence of his mother which almost guarantees the satisfaction of his hunger and nearly any other need at that particular age. This feeling slowly develops into what we know as love. So it is visible how the feeling of love has a connection with the ego. It basically arises from needs. Then as the baby grows, it finds new ways to obtain pleasure and realizes that a big chunk of these are associated with other humans. He also realizes that the way he needs others to satisfy his needs, they too in some way or the other need him for the satisfaction of their needs. Slowly and gradually his observations increase in number and he finds out that the others around him are more or less similar and that it is safe to assume that, another person would react in a similar way if they were to face an identical situation. I shall call this the,"Identity Principle".
    Of course a big part of what is my thought process and what is my understanding of human behavior comes from the above assumption and from the several thought experiments that I conducted on myself. I don't choose to call myself a very interesting case study, but the point is I didn't have any lab rats!!!
   So going back to the topic, let us try to understand why we show a perturbed behavior. As the baby grows into a kid, a teenager and then an adult, it interacts with it's fellow creatures and since their behavior is equally rooted in the ego, the principle of give and take is well drilled into the mind. This principle is the hart of all interpersonal relationships and I know this idea will face a strong resistance from many, but let me attempt to justify it.
   Suppose A and B are two individuals. If A acts in such a way that helps B in quenching a drive, then there are two possible causes. First is that B rewards A in order to return the favour. The second is that B doesn't do anything in reaction to A's action. For case one, I don't really need to justify my argument. For case two, I can argue that A acted in that fashion in order to either get a good feeling about himself and satisfy his ego, or that he did it as an act of indirect compulsion, to avoid the pain that he would have to go through in terms of guilt because he didn't do what was morally,"correct".
   Thus it is very rational to assume the role of the give and take principle in relationships. Now we are a step closer towards achieving our goal. It is not difficult to see that a man would want to keep his social connections alive and that his dear ones and those that matte to him, have a positive opinion about him. Under normal circumstances, the act of trying to behave nicely happens more at the subconscious level because we have been doing it for years and now it doesn't require that much of active thought. But when a man feels he is being watched, this mechanism is brought to the conscious level which greatly alters his behaviour. Curious as we all are, we have a tendency to pay more attention to something that is apparently strange over something that is fairly common. Applying the Identity principle, he concludes that the other person has found something strange in his behavior. This triggers several concerns in his mind regarding others' thoughts about him and hence possibilities of damage to the ego. The ego immediately sets into action and tries to fix the problem. But wait a second, what exactly is the problem? Yes that is what is to be found out first and it employs several methods in an attempt to accomplish this task. One of the most direct methods is to ask the observer if he has found anything unusual. The more interesting method is the trial and error method, wherein the subject alters certain things about his stance, style of talking, facial expression etc. and every time looks for a reaction from the observer. However, a third interesting case is when the ego shuts down all voluntary activities. A simple analogy will help explain this better. Suppose one is in a room with a large number of tube lights and fans and hence there are plenty of switches on the switch board. If one is in a hurry to leave and one of the lights is still switched on, but one doesn't know which particular switch corresponds to that tube light, then instead of bothering to find that switch, we turn off all the switches. This is exactly what the ego does and the person goes into his defensive shell.
   I don't claim that these three are the only methods employed by the mind, but they do fairly well in explaining most cases. I would like to conclude with something in quantum mechanics that is strikingly similar to our study here. It is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It states that the very act of observation, changes the characteristics of the subject. A special thanks to my friend and senior in IIA, Shubham, and my friend Mayuresh for instigating me to ponder over the subject. Thank you for wasting so much time reading this article, for the sake of encouraging the writer in me!!!
Later...

Welcome

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz