#1: The fallibility of human nature

Intro

The idea of this lecture was to lay the basis of why society exists. Why is it needed in the first place.

The pretext: We are a fragile being, but unlike other living beings, with an immense power of perception. What this leads us to is this immense sense of anticipation of how things will turn out or how things were. We try to see well in advance of what is apparently visible. In fact we are forced to perceive rather than see because our senses are limited. This always keeps us on our toes, the lack of sensory understanding and comprehension make us insecure. So our very existence is thanks to the heightened sense of danger that we have normalized into our day to day lives. Probably just so much as other species, but we have extended this danger-alertness to a whole other level, thanks to our perceptive abilities. The struggle for survival in a good form is probably what it means to be alive.

Part 1

A situation was presented to the students :-

An unknown large room.Your senses are there but have been dumbed down. You can see, but not so clearly, you can hear but only swishes and whispers, you can smell but only a wiff here and there, you can taste, but only a little. Its cold and humid. Basically physically uncomfortable. You’v got to live there now for sometime.Room’s large enough for many things and its cluttered.It looks as if you are not the only one there, but you cant make out initially. There are many objects protruding out, sharp and blunt, some hurt, some are comfortable to keep nearby. Some are heavy, some light, some rough , some smooth, etc… There are two kinds of sounds. One is a regular one that repeats periodically. The other randomly.

What will go through your mind? – A discussion was encouraged and the students were asked to write their questions in different pieces of post-it. Some example questions:

• Why am I here? Any reason?
• Am I alone?
• I’ll probably search for food.
• I’ll probably fall asleep, because i am stressed and do not know what to do.
• What are my possessions that I need to save?

And many more.

Next, a graph was drawn as shown in the following figure. Students were then asked to place their chits, on discussion and popular vote in appropriate sections of the graph space. A large number were placed in the first quadrant which signifies the students raised most questions with a curious outlook intended to ensure or enhance chance of survival. It showed a rational behavior. However, while designing this thought experiment, I felt that a stressful and uncertain situation like this will throw up most thoughts that will fall in the 4th quadrant – between survival and hopelessness. This curious development was discussed with the students and some agreed that the outcome was too rational to be realistic. Most probably because either the scene was not created well enough to actually feel as intended or because the class is generally more rationalistic than the instructor. I prefer the latter view.

The objective of this exercise was to bring out the acknowledgment that we are not very good with uncertainty. What should have happened after that was to be able to logically drive the discussion and consensus from ‘difficulty in dealing with uncertainty‘ and ‘inherent insecurity’ as starting points leading to how groups of similar/familiar individuals help in overcoming our insecurity, a.k.a. society. The latter was discussed but not to the effect. Also a student raised an important point, that if too many humans are there in the above situation, because food is a concern now, this could lead to conflict. A resources issue. Could not take upon this lead to discuss more, and was a bit pleasantly surprised. This was all going great! So students were OK till this point.

Then, i realized i am loosing track of the mentally prepared lecture. I wanted to drive the group towards articulating human flaws, based on the above discussion, that make us vulnerable to skipping truth and so on. But i could not orient gracefully from a participant in the discussions to taking up the position of driving a group of youngsters to a certain direction. This ordeal lasted about 15 minutes. It was crazy.

Part 2

After a much needed break (encouraged by the instructor himself who was facing existential challenges), the class resumed. We sat together, this time like in a closer circle for further discussions. A bit informal helped me ease up. We began analyzing the previous graph again, more focused on understanding human tendencies in a tough situation. I tried to put through a discussion on the repeatable sound vs random sound aspect in the above scenario. Some wanted to explore the random sound more as it seemed interesting (Why act so rational?) and some seemed to prefer the repeated sound as it seemed safe. I put it as a line:

A known devil vs an unknown angel – which one is better?

A good discussion could have resulted, but i could not drive because i didn’t know how to. Some students seemed convinced that a known devil was better, but that’s about it.

Next the topic of traditions was opened, cant remember how we got to this… Anyways, this was very interesting, albeit out of plan. Many thoughts were exchanged. Summary:

1. Traditions help us know who and where we come from.
2. Because of traditions we do not have to think much, or for every small thing. It tells us what to do in a situation.
3. We could be in trouble if we do not follow traditions.
4. If things have worked so far as traditions say, then they must be good and relevant now and in future!
5. And a few more.

There was also a mention of casteism and social hierarchy, but we didn’t pursue it this time.

On conclusion i summarized as follows:

1. Human beings are always insecure.
2. Society helps in making us feel secure.

But the above seemed enforced by me, rather than discovered by everyone through this class. Surprising no one dissented and that’s bad. Need to take up this issue next – why my opinions were not countered!

Conclusion

Class went OK. ‘Uncertain room’ situation was a good exercise. Hopefully the students got some idea of what i was trying to convey. But i left the group with much confusion probably.

• Need to be prepared with two exercises for each of the 2 hours so that there’s enough content at hand.
• Need to allow students to discover and lead in some areas and come to common conclusion rather than enforce my thoughts onto them.