Someone told me to not-be-a-robot.
One of my first thought trains went to the self-organization criticality model with the Byzantine Generals’ Problem. I was trying to reach an explanation for the social organization from a station of mathematics and answer why we are so human. But that’s for another rabbit hole. I spontaneously deboarded that train after that flag- don’t be a robot. It’s amusing that I’ve been sporadically called a robot by people I’ve dated. I wonder why. If you’re interested in the train I deboarded, find the next robot in the blog.
And so, I’ve decided to write about emotions; feelings. I believe we can never have absolute feelings for anyone or anything. Instead, we carry with us a bag of feelings. Like, you can never love another human fully. Irrespective of whether it’s your mother, sister, lover, or friend. You’ll have things that you are insecure about or dislike (or even hate) about them. Yet when we do choose love (mostly effortlessly), we choose it from this bag of mixed feelings.
We share this bag with everyone in our lives. And when they are around, we express the ones we find most in the bag. Sometimes, it doesn’t match with the feeling of the other person. And it’s okay! A conflict may or may not arise. That’s where efforts are required to have a healthy relationship.
Most importantly, there is a giant bag of feelings that we share with ourselves. Which, mostly, acts as the universal bag out of which we derive the
rest of the bags. So, when it comes to making efforts, for a healthy relationship with ourselves or a friend or lovers or a piece of art,
how much effort we can put into it depends a lot on the bag that we share with ourselves. (Note: Dogs are an exception; infinite love for them.)
Perhaps we can call them incomplete bags. To be historical, we were born with even empty bags. And our parents, friends, teachers, and bullies filled it to make our very own unique bag. Good or bad. It’s ours, nonetheless. Thus, this bag is dependent on your socio-economic heritage and moral obligations. What we want to do about them, is the choice we make. And we are not always free to make that choice. That’s what makes our personal bags political. There is a problem though. The problem of trust. Whenever you share a feeling from your bag with someone, there’s an inherent trust we put inside it. It binds us to a nonverbal contract in that relationship. The problem is: Humans are not trustworthy. Or rather, we do not know about each other’s bags. We may trust in the bag that we share, but there’s no way we can know what one wants with their personal bags or when do they want it.
I feel, this disconnect is the problem. The distrust. For instance, that ruling party’s politicians back stabbing us, as they revealed their true feelings after elections- distrust. Similarly, you are unaware of the bags that your peers carry (Or worse, they may have been gaslighting you, like the politicians). Boom, distrust.
And when we witness them share feelings, of OUR relationship, with someone else, it breaks our hearts. And slowly our bags are filled with different feelings. We share the state of our bags with our friends. Their feelings for that person change too. Distrust spreads. We call them liars and ignorant robots who don’t care about us anymore. But IRL, they’re just making a choice they need to make for their personal bags. Sometimes, at the expense of others- selfish choice. (Again, our morals are at work here).
So, is there a solution to this problem? Well, yes and no. It’s a harsh world. Sometimes, we remove distrust/people from our lives, put our trust in someone new and move on. (Let’s do that with the ruling party please?). Other times, we miss them and live times of our lives with empty bags. Or we unsuccessfully try to fill them with feelings for art and work. In essence, we keep taking leaps of faith with our bags. If we get the right person(s) or things to share it with, well & good. If not, we leap again. But please, do take that leap, without giving yourself a morally higher ground (Don’t be that politician). If you make a wrong choice; you’ll learn to change your choices. If you don’t make any choice; nothing is going to change. Here’s a small song I wrote to say the same:
I took a leap of faith.
I took some hurt on the way.
I didn't die, so I want to say.
Please take a leap of faith.
Just trust yourself,
And the choice you make.
Be double kind,
to the hate you face.
Apologise,
when you make mistakes.
Please take a leap
Of faith.
Infinite emotions.
Break the walls, cross oceans.
Shattered trust? unloved love?
Pour it all and bake it.
You'll make it.
You'll make it.
Take a leap of faith.
You'll break it.
You'll make it.
You'll make it.
Take a leap of faith.
You'll make it.
So I was thinking that the problem of distrust, is analogous to the Byzantine’s generals problem in the self-organizing civilization that we’ve created. The points of criticality can be said say, war, extremism, political turmoil or cultural identity crisis (Whoops!). But this was a useless thought. Non-scientific perhaps.