Musings of a White Haired Teenager

In the twelfth episode of the fourth season of one of the most influential comedy series of the 20th Century (Seinfeld), George Costanza makes the argument that picking someone up from the airport in New York, or the mere ability to ask for such a pick-up, is the sign of a “binding social contract” that signifies a commitment that runs deep. The one newly chosen to do the task rushes to overperform, offering exaggerated assurances with lines like “I will take care of everything.” In that enthusiasm of lofty promises, the new kid in town may be quite unaware that the ground they stand on is shifting sand, because many histories have been erased for their benefit. The ask and the response lead to castles in the air that rise quickly when there is no knowledge of the ruins that lie beneath, and the one who has been cast aside watches with a distant amusement, for they know the pattern too well, the pattern of concealment and of hiding the past so the newcomer is not frightened away. ...

There is a certain pleasure in knowing that someone needs you. The hours spent in conversations and the tender moments suddenly demonstrate that one can have influence on another person’s life. A life in turmoil, fighting unknown devils, continuously needing to fill a void that devours the very core of existence. And then the cost–reward equation rewards the person as the chosen one to fill the void. The one selected feels important, for in that moment of being chosen there is the illusion of triumph, the sense that some contest has been won and there is work to be done to support the one seeking the answer to the “Where Art Thou?” question. Forgotten in that rush is the reality that someone else was answering the same question a moment ago—now discarded, now the cost, now erased from the narrative. Time-tested friendships dwindle in the face of the excitement of the new kid in town. Yet the void is not always produced by discarding an old friend. Often the emptiness exists independent...

A friend of mine commented on one of the earlier posts and later asked me if these posts dealt with personal issues. Everything to me is always personal. But that does not necessarily mean that there are specific people involved. Within the individualistic culture in which I thrive, the notion of personal is deep, for in my home the self is foregrounded and autonomy is often prized over obligation (Triandis, 1995; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). My existence matters, and what I write may not be directly personal, but they certainly deal with issues that people experience. As one of my friend and colleague reminded me—I take everything personally because I refuse to live on my knees as do many of my readers refuse to do as well. And thus, yes, it is acutely personal because I feel strongly about the ethics of relationships and the way in which they are treated with callous disrespect. When a relationship collapses into the act of discarding, the wound for the discarded is not just in the ...

On a warm September evening, at a gathering of friends and colleagues, I met up with a pastor of the Quaker faith whose half century of listening to her congregation shaped the advice she gave me about what I struggle with in these blogs, for she reminded me that risk lies at the heart of relationships, and the cost–reward analysis is often just a language for legitimizing the choice to love oneself at the expense of others. After the cost-reward computation, the discarded one is placed in the liability column, their absence suddenly a relief, their companionship no longer a need but a nuisance avoided, the chooser convinced that the reward of time freed outweighs the negligible cost of a fading connection. To jettison a friend is to calculate that the loss is minimal compared to the convenience of declaring, without guilt, “sorry I will not be there when you will be there to see me.” What makes the calculation possible, and even comforting, is the discovery that another person has app...

There was quite an overwhelming response to the way in which people have felt optimized out of networks, relationships, and friendships, and the pain was palpable in words such as, “It’s a cruel experience that strips a person of their dignity and humanity.” This is the cost of optimization. When relationships are optimized, there is always a cost-reward equation, and unlike the mathematical elegance of linear algebra, this equation rarely resolves neatly. In linear algebra the computations are dispassionate, the numbers form an arc that intersects neatly showing the optimum point after eliminating the unwanted to make space for the new. In the arc of life, it is life destroyed by the disappearance of acknowledgment and by actions that state: I do not have time for you. The cost occurs first for the chooser who discards a time-tested friend. There is a loss to that chooser, even if they refuse to admit it, because what is jettisoned is not just a human being, but the shared history tha...

I do not remember, it might have been in high school or college, but we were introduced to the field of mathematics called linear algebra. It returns often to mind when I teach my courses on Artificial Intelligence as it did in the class I am teaching now, and the specific segment that fascinated me was the process of mathematical optimization where decisions have to be made between available choices and eventually find a solution that fits all the criteria. This process forces one to accept and reject some set of variables. Optimization presents a set of choices. To make this mathematical construct accessible to all, I often turn to relatable experiences in our everyday life – such as making choices between relationships and people. In human relationships, there is an unceasing process of trimming, adjusting, and deciding what is essential and what can be let go. We rarely name it “optimization” in the moment - it feels more like instinct, or practicality, or even compromise. Yet unde...

In a recent conversation, following the earlier reflections on the nature of human relationships, especially the thing we so often call a “friendship,” another challenge revealed itself. It is not unlike a public health crisis, where knowledge of an impending harm demands a choice of response (Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility , 1979). When I was directing the Survey Research Center of my University, I was constantly faced with the challenge in training my interviewers. For example, deciding on the action, in a study of domestic violence, when the subject of the interview was scared of imminent harm. That was in the realm of research with well-established protocols. But, when, in our mundane lives, it becomes clear to a caring person that someone close is about to face an unpleasant situation, the moral question emerges: should one act, or stand aside? It can be argued that the first responsibility of friendship is to notice. Noticing is more than listening to words or reading ge...