I've been teaching them for four months now, and it took them four months to realise that I am a sentient being with a name. It's a little sad how they regarded me merely as an authoritative figure with no feelings, nor a personality, yet somewhat satisfying to know that they have finally realised that I am human, too. (It occurred to me that kids are... solipsistic?) The power of bribery, huh?
**
My friend's girlfriend sent me a message for the very first time. Her SMS went like this:
"Hi, Mary* here. I want to bake a cake... do you think you can teach me?"
I read it and immediately thought: Meh, she just wants to use my oven. If I were in a worse mood, and if she was someone I'm closer to, I might have just straight out retorted, "If you want to use my oven, say lah." But we're not close, and I am generally more civil to half-strangers than I am to strangers and best friends. (With strangers, you can afford to be uncivil, because their opinion is inconsequential. With best friends, you can afford to be obnoxious, because they'll -hopefully- be more tolerant. With acquaintances... you need to watch your tongue.)
It IS true. She doesn't have an oven, and as far as I know, neither do her close friends. I am her best option. Granted, it is a bit surprising that she actually gathered the guts to ask me, because I know for a fact that she thought me intimidating. Only quite recently did she declare that I am a nice person. This was because during a session of joke trading, I managed to regale my repertoire of dirty jokes, and she thought me more amiable than I had appeared. I am an acquired taste, I guess.
Though I am more than happy to take up the offer (when she so politely requests for my expertise, my ego is inadvertently stroked), I cannot forego the fact that at the root of it all, she is just making use of me. I tried justifying to myself why she is perfectly deserving of coming to my house to use my oven. Well, she is lending me her graphing calculator for an indefinite period of time. A GC costs well over a hundred bucks. Surely it doesn't matter if she uses my oven?
The very act of me trying to justify my acceptance of her request alerted me to an ugly yet piercingly real truth. Relationships are just transactional in nature. Relationships only exist because we have something to offer to each other. Even if there aren't any tangible rewards that are being exchanged, like in the scenario I had just illustrated where she benefits from my oven and I benefit from her GC, there is the intrinsic reward of having your conscience satiated when you do nice things for other people. Is there true altruism? Do we ever do things for the sole purpose of benefitting someone else? Doesn't seem like it. Here's a flowchart for your reference.
I think altruism doesn't exist, and the closest approximation to altruism (which is an unattainable ideal) in our harsh reality would probably be internal reward.
It's daunting to know that once my usefulness runs out, people will stop befriending me. Even if our relationship isn't tangibly transactional, once my "friend" stops deriving the pleasure she gets from making me happy, I am no longer worth anything to her. It's the same in romantic relationships. Once the satisfaction that you had from being self-sacrifical has vanished, the relationship cannot work out anymore. The gains from trade have diminished, so yep, you break off trade ties.
I can be terribly nice to someone if I have an agenda.
Level 1: I want money/praise/a material equivalent from that person
Level 2: I want the person to like me
Level 3: I want to feel good from being nice to that person
If any of them apply, I can be helpful to the point of subservience. I take hour-long bus rides, I stay up awfully late just to offer help, etc. But once none of the levels apply, I immediately turn indifferent and uncaring. All that niceness seems like just a front to get what I want. I don't think it's strictly hypocrisy; it's just that we change, and how we feel towards someone can change radically, for no good reason at all.
It is no use to pretend that we don't have agendas and motives. Relationships are just a never-ending series of mind games - they are.
4 comments:
sad to say, its true that all relationships are based on some form of 'agenda'.
Its always best to assume that relationships are based on altruism, and that people will return the favour.
eustace: Hmmm, I don't think it's beneficial to assume that relationships are based on altruism; better be safe than sorry. And by assuming that people will return a favour, that's not being very altruistic, is it?
c.f. social exchange theory
when i meant "return the favour", it means they will bear the concept of 'altruistic trust' too.
Then they would help people on altruistic trust.
In the long run, helps me too. :)
carriexoxo: yupz. Its social exchange theory.
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