Saturday, June 26, 2010

Being good

Why does society expect us to be good at all times. Shouldn't there be a reason and a choice? I think this chain of thought is quite analogous to Ayn Rand's theory of objectivism but somewhat different. I am not saying that man has a right to think of himself and only himself. I personally think Rand is right logically but I am still queasy about seeing a world in which every man is following this line of thought. That is not exactly the issue. The issue is co existence. Assuming that Rand's wish is granted and man is allowed to be selfish (which he is in any case practically this day), we will see that people will have ill will towards the elite, the powerful who choose to be "selfish". They are expected to be "good" in the sense of helping the ones fallen behind, being polite, compassionate, charitable and what not. But the burning question is why ?!! Why should these things be expected from anyone. I mean the whole issue is that when getting something you don't deserve, you need to be humble. You cannot expect compassion just hope for it and appreciate if it comes your way. That is sadly lacking more and more in society and expecting things without deserving them is growing rampant.

Fighting

Fighting is inevitable and unavoidable - so I won't talk about that. I will instead muse on how to deal with these fights. We try to but cannot completely avoid developing differences with our friends and others occasionally but if we are reasonable in dealing with them, we can avoid making enemies and much of the hatred that follows. As far as I know, for most people - the idea is not to create troubles for others - we are too self centred to think about others even in this capacity. All we want is to make sure that there is not even a small dent in our ego. So we won't back out of a fight, rather like in a game of cards- we see the last bet and raise the bar a little. This can be somewhat contained if one of the people involved shows some restrain, but in cases when this doesn't happen situation worsens. So we basically have a self sustaining process - the escalation of fight. 
Another major problem is when you cannot restrict contact. There are situations which force people to work together or be together even when they hate each others' guts. In other cases limiting contact can lead to gradual cooling of tensions, but if that is not possible reverse happens - every act of your adversary seems to be against you, mocking you and is an irritant, as such enmity increases. The problem is there is no solution.. without expecting one of the people involved to show restraint which by most people is seen as cowardice. 
So yeah, I don't have any solution to the problem; just pointed out some obvious points