Hope floats (fueled by Radiohead)

I am an optimist, or used to be. But I feel my faith is being questioned. At least in one of the things I believe in. I was (note the past tense) a firm believer that people are good by default. That everybody wants the greater good - that on a flat playing field, with nothing much at stake, people would chose to do something which would benefit others and themselves (maybe in the short term, maybe in the long run). Or even sacrifice something small and insignificant to do something for others. Given what is at stake is not that big. I used to believe that people chose to be selfish only when they are given a choice between themselves and others, and the thing at stake is something significant (while writing this, I realized that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy and the folly of my initial belief in people). I have come to realize that people would always be selfish.

I do not claim to say that something is always right or wrong, but given a particular set of circumstances and enough knowledge*, and a set of choices, you can always figure out the best choice with a certain amount of surety. It is like an optimization problem in mathematics where your circumstances are the known rules and lemmas of mathematics, set of choices are the constraints on variables on which you are trying to optimize. The knowledge can be analogous to the gradient information of the functions involved in the optimization problem. The best choice is the one which gives you the optimum. But while I was writing this analogy, I realized I have managed to refute the very point I was trying to make. I was trying to make the point is that all sentient, reasonable and knowledgeable human beings, we can always make the best choice (because there is one best choice). And I was trying to make it analogous with the optimum in any optimization problem. But in practice, optimization problems are really hard to solve. And even if you solve it, you can not say if its the best possible choice (or that nothing better exists). Only a very simplified version can be solved relatively easily and something can be said about the optimum. So a common way of solving other kinds of problems is to approximate the original problem with this simplified form (and this somehow suffices in some cases). And so I have come to realize that there is no one best choice in some cases, and sometimes we (human beings) approximate the given situation to something overly simple and then make the "best" choice. So screw this analogy.

The point I was trying to make is that in most situation, we know what is the "right" thing to do. But as human beings, we choose to be utterly selfish or just plain dumb. And over the last few days, I have come to realize that most people are selfish (not a surprise), effing stupid, utterly fickle and I hate them. This does not mean I am going to get myself a gun and start firing in a grocery store (not that there are enough bullets to take out every stupid person and in the end I would have to take myself out as well). This feeling of hatred implies that either I am jealous of them or feel superior to them and that I always do the "right" thing (for example, this second point is what I feel is the cause of strife between religions of uncannily similar origins like Islam, Christianity and Judaism). But its neither of them. This feeling of hatred is not so much like the feeling between two parties. I hate people for what the world has become. And it is the people in it that have caused it. As V from V for Vendetta put it,

"How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

Now to what is wrong with the world. I will explain what it is, but first I will try to list somethings which I do not consider to problems for the world (or even a country):

1. Increasing unemployment, increasing government control and "the overly liberal movement" is not taking the country of USA through "its darkest time in history". Obama is not a messenger of death, neither was George W. Bush and nobody deserves a Hitler mustache. Hitler was one. Anyone in the presidency of US who could come close to Hitler would be Andrew Jackson (read Trail of tears). But the funny thing is that the people of the country (or who claimed to be the people of the country but were all immigrants) considered this migration of the 'savages' (the true people of the country later known as the USA) a great victory for Jackson. He is put on stamps and coins, nobody draws a Hitler mustache on his face. Actually I should not have ventured into the amount of hypocrisies present in this country. This is a topic of a complete post in itself. But what I am trying to say is that this is not a "dark period" for this country. If you want capitalism to play(and hence less/no government control over the economy), you cannot hold the government responsible for the unemployment rates or economy.
2. The strife in the Middle East - it is just a gang war between two religions over which gang gets a particular hood to hang out in. And all the religious reasons are prehistoric and easily insignificant to a sane individual not biased by religious people. he only reason no body is probably giving up is because the other one wouldn't - no better than a sibling strife over a toy! This issue cannot and will not be solved until the real problem of the world is solved.
3. There are many more examples - but I want to get on with the point I was trying to make

The problem with us is (its kind of hard for me to put it in words) this loss of perspective. This lack of proper prioritizing (so to speak). This habit of believing what you see most people do just because deciding for yourself is so much harder. I agree that if most people are doing it, there is a good reason why that is the case. But a bunch of well placed propaganda machines might be able to obtain the same result. Thinking about all this is filling me up with so much despair and concern (or it might just be the massive amounts of caffeine I am on right now), it is hard for me to explain what it is I am concerned about.

It is a very common occurrence to see people speed on a highway, going 15mph higher than every body else around you and tailgating every vehicle in front of you until they let you overtake them. This, in itself, is fairly common (do not get me wrong, majority are sane law abiding drivers and not ridiculous pricks like them) and immensely concerning. Its not like that they do not know that it is unsafe to drive like that, for them and people around them. (lets not get into using your phone while driving - people never learn from others' or even their mistakes). But what do these people do with that 10 minutes they save in an hour long drive. They spend it on facebook, updating their status saying how some dude would not let them overtake in the carpool lane (even though you should not have been in the carpool lane to begin with). What is concerning is that nobody thinks twice about how ridiculous this kind of behavior is. It just blows my mind. Priorities man, priorities!!!

Even this notion to be courteous to everybody by default seems to be lost on everyone. My understanding is that almost all religions somehow teach that, but somehow this is the most often forgotten lesson. Be courteous to others. And what do people do in the name of religion, prosecute supposed outliers. Why does it matter to me that the person sitting opposite to you in the library is homosexual and likes to/prefers to/can only have sex with someone his own sex. It is his own belief and people are entitled to it. It is not affecting you in anyway, nobody is going rape you - infact rape is more common (and mostly exclusive) among heterosexual males. Maybe that means we should condemn all heterosexual males!!! As if being courteous to strangers is too hard, some do not even extend it to people they know, people who are your own flesh and blood. Parents disown their own kids because they are gay, or marry outside their religion (I hope my dad is not reading this). Why? It is somehow like an individual does not define himself/herself, but what credentials they carry with them (color, ethnicity, religion, ....). What is wrong with us? Why are we doing this? Why are we being so utterly stupid and fickle? Can't we think for ourselves? These things are not even so hard. Is it so hard to decide what is more important, your relationship with your own child or stick to certain beliefs about some in the society consider "wrong".

This argument can be turned on me saying that murder is something that society considered wrong, but you should not condemn your child for committing murder. To this I would say that first, this is where the point about thinking for yourself comes into play. The same set of arguments used for sexual orientation cannot be used for having murderous instincts. Secondly, murders are to be considered with the situations they have been committed in (read murders in war, murders under self-defense, serial killing). There is no blanket solution for all problems.

Another example is the recent drive by Wikipedia for donations. People are ready to spend $20 to watch the midnight show of the newest edition of the Harry Potter series. But when you ask the same people to donate that same amount to Wikipedia, they look at me confused and blank-faced, asking me why? And these are people who use it at least 10 times a day. It is not that anybody is asking you to donate something for a completely selfless act. This is you who is going to benefit from it. This is most selfish act than other charities. Priorities man, priorities!

I cannot talk anymore. It is just too depressing. It is like when you are running so fast that you are completely out of breath and trying to breathe so much at the same time that you cannot breathe anymore. That is how my head is feeling with the amount of thoughts going on in there.

I don't know man, I will write again once I figure out how the glass is half full.