Tragedies and Statistics

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."

— Unknown

Despite the fact that this quote has constantly been misattributed to Stalin, even when there is no such proof of him ever uttering such a phrase, many still dismiss this quote as if it was indeed the self-justifying words of a ruthless, calculating, inhumane dictator—a murderer of millions—of an era that has long past us. 

Though I will argue that it is a reminder for each and every one of us to be conscious of the fact that our existence is not merely bound to the confines of our immediate social circles—our friends, our family, our acquaintances, our coworkers and our community. It is an exhortation to recognize that we are also part of humanity—that when the world begins to fall apart, when our nations fall prey to disease, famine, or war, when millions across the globe unjustly perish and perpetually suffer, we do not consign ourselves to being mere bystanders, indifferent to the chaos that rages on on our computer and television screens because we dismiss it simply as bad news, as unfortunate circumstances, as something we hope someone will figure out. 

Instead, we preoccupy ourselves with the “tragedies” of our personal lives. Yes—the people in our lives and our own individual pursuit of happiness and fulfillment is undeniably important, but the world will not wait for us to decide if it’s “worth it” to sacrifice the stability of our normal lives, to go out of our way to change it. Someday, somehow, irrespective of our willingness or desire to commit, we must all dutifully acknowledge the roles we each must play to make this world a better place, and to prevent the proliferation of evil, lest it suddenly appear at our doorstep when we least expect it.

Quote-worthy

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

― Oscar Wilde

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

― Albert Einstein

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

― Mark Twain

We are predisposed to embrace the aphoristic, the epigrammatic, the quote-worthy—the concise, short snippets of truth that offer the among the most efficient means of attaining wisdom, the highest truth-to-energy-invested ratio out of any form of study we can do. 

But how many of these one- or two-sentence adages have we actually imbued into the walk of our daily life? To what extent have we actually internalized and integrated the truths within the framework of our consciousness? If, in the heat of the moment, they serve as a useful reminder to you to be your best self, so be it. But the greatest truths in our lives are derived from experience, whether the grueling challenges we overcame in life, or the countless hours we spent dutifully reading, writing, introspecting, and engaging in discourse to compose our thoughts. Without it, these adages become meaningless, hollow words that we merely use to affect a false sense of enlightenment and erudition. 

It is only when we understand truth in its most unrefined, coarse, and ungraceful form—the knowledge that is forged through trial and tribulation, that is gleaned from years upon years of diligence and mindfulness—that we can far more profoundly understand the beloved, elegant, quote-worthy adages.

Only after the fact

We find it all too easy to be haughty, to be disdainful, to speak with a choleric air of arrogance and superiority when we impudently operate by the premise that the people we’re speaking to are intentionally lazy, careless, inattentive, selfish, immoral, or hypocritical. 

But time and time again, once we actually take the time to learn the other person’s story, we regret our contemptuous behavior. It is only after the fact—only after we’ve learned that the person we lambasted for being timorous and cowardly had an incredibly traumatic past, only after we’ve learned that the employee that we shamed for making a mistake on our order has a severe mental disability, only after we’ve learned that the ostensibly irresponsible person that never showed up to our appointment got into a tragic car accident—that we begin to commiserate, that we begin to feel remorse. 

We are shamelessly quick to assign motives and fabricate narratives to swiftly quell our fear of the unknown, to provide us with at least a surface-level explanation for others’ behavior. But why? Why play this inane game vacillating between contempt and remorse when we can just be a little patient, to take a moment to ask the other person why, to wait things out and actually be presented with real evidence of a certain narrative?

The Paradox of Choice

One of the fundamental paradoxes of our lives is the one of choice. 

In the contemplation of our decisions—our rudimentary, superficial calculus of cause and effect, our biased judgments of what constitutes a good or bad outcome, and our overweening faith in a stable, predictable world—we often forget that, as humans, we have an absolutely horrendous track record at predicting the future, and an even worse record of making decisions that ultimately contribute to a happier or more fulfilling life. 

This is because we forget to factor in our bias for “good” outcomes when we partake in that calculus; by operating by our instinctive preconceptions of “good,” we predispose ourselves towards the path of least resistance, the options that seem to be laden with less suffering and strife. We would much rather prefer it if we didn’t fail; if we didn’t get fired from or rejected for a job; if we passed an exam or evaluation with flying colors; if we didn’t have to end a relationship or friendship even if it is holding us back. 

The paradox is that while we implicitly understand that suffering and strife is the only means by which we can grow as individuals and derive any meaning whatsoever from life, all our decision-making calculus is coded to obviate it. We think we know what’s best for us, but the stark reality is that we couldn’t be more wrong. Every single success story that we celebrate consists of failure, of people that made ostensibly terrible mistakes—failed classes, job rejections, ruined relationships, or missed opportunities. But by overcoming these challenges that came their way, they were able to divert space for growth in other areas in their life that ultimately contributed towards their success. 

So why is it, then, that we have such an aversion towards making purportedly risky choices? Do we really understand the long-term consequences of persisting on the beaten path, let alone the less-traveled one? And, above all, do we understand how those consequences will ultimately contribute towards a life worth living? 

If we value personal growth, if we wish to live a life with meaning, purpose, and success, then, paradoxically, we must learn to make decisions that will likely lead us to failure, in one form or another. 

“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.” 

— Seth Godin

Veneration

There are people we look up to in life—perhaps our parents or grandparents, perhaps an older sibling or a successful friend, perhaps our favorite athletes, artists, or authors, perhaps a pastor or a priest, perhaps a venerated guru or sage.

We go to them for direction when lost, for solace when distraught, for motivation when unmotivated, for inspiration when uninspired, for love when unloved. 

We so desperately want them to give us something, 

we so desperately want them to make us feel better, 

we so desperately want them to be right, 

so much so, that we forget that they are human. 

Especially with the advent of the internet and social media that allows us to be exposed to a virtually endless marketplace of personalities, there is a very strong tendency among us to idolize and excessively revere these people we look up to. When we subscribe to a specific political ideology or religion, we predispose ourselves to blindly accepting the preordained, established truths because we’ve already declared membership of that particular group. It is this thought process by which individuals form preconceptions of the world not in any way based on rational, intentional thought and critical thinking, but merely based on group identity. If I declare myself a Christian, I must also not believe in gay marriage. If I declare myself a conservative, I must also be against abortion. 

In much the same way, many of us are led to believe that we have to subscribe to a particular person and their ideology. We convince ourselves that they must be infallible, that their wisdom and knowledge has the capacity to stretch to any possible facet of life even beyond their expertise and experience. And when they are criticized or attacked for being wrong about something, we personally feel attacked and feel the need to retaliate ourselves to defend the truth that we have worked so hard to establish. And when we feel as though we can’t defend that truth, we feel inclined to lose faith and stop believing in the merit of that person entirely. 

But lest we forget that all the people that we venerate are human. Very few of them claim to be perfect. Very few of them claim to be completely infallible. As we might exhort all the rest of us, we should hold them to the same standard. We can make mistakes. We can be wrong. We can talk about things even though we have no qualification or expertise in the relevant fields, and not be chastised or lambasted for even the slightest misstep or misunderstanding. And faltering in that way does not directly translate to a diminishment of one’s value as a human being and the rest of their contributions to the world we live in. I wrote about this more extensively in my Internet Drama reflection: just because someone is wrong about one thing or several things does not devalue or invalidate the rest of their work. Just because someone did something dishonorable, e.g. spreading misinformation or displaying insensitivity to another person or a group, does not mean they are a terrible human being unworthy of our attention. 

I am a huge fan of Jordan Peterson’s work. But I am extremely appalled at the extent to which some individuals have taken this unwavering ideological loyalty, whether as a means of defending him or criticizing him. Recently, made the mistake of wandering into the comments sections of some rather polemical videos breaking down some of his arguments, a very familiar wasteland widespread across the internet, predictably infested with ignorance, myopia, prejudice, self-righteousness, ad hominem, and dishonesty. The truth is, we can all play the same game. For anyone participating in these vile, toxic hubs of ignorance, whether on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, or any discussion board or forum, I would like to ask some questions: where is your work? Where is your generosity to the world? Where are the blog posts, essays, or books that you’ve written? Where are the lectures, speeches, or debates that you’ve participated in? What have you shared that is contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way? How have you positively affected and influenced the people around you? Can you openly and publicly tell me about all your personal mistakes in the past? Can you tell me about your perfect streak of never being wrong in any difficult life event or a problem that confounded you in the past? If we so have the temerity to ridicule or spurn individuals on a whim, let us at least do so not as blatant hypocrites.

But we don’t have to play this game in the first place. Instead of making it a futile battle of righteousness, qualification, or apparent merit, or a senseless, inane cyclical contest of humiliation, justification, and redemption, we can make it about truth. We can realize that, in the end, past all of our pretensions and superficial identities, we all just want to understand. We want to understand the truth because it is the only means by which we can act in a way that helps us all get to where we actually want to go. And the only truth-seeking process I know of is one of patience and intent, one of listening, thinking, and discussing. Nothing else.

Which happens first?

The way we feel influences the way we act, just as much as the way we act influences the way we feel. What caused what? What influenced what? Where does it start? Where does it end? 

We can decide what we do, but that decision is almost always entirely based on how we feel. And more often than not, we can’t choose how we feel. 

We are perpetually mired in this vicious, capricious cycle that seems to taunt us, provoking us to question the validity of our belief in our free will. 

This is perhaps one of humanity’s greatest merits—the ability to delude ourselves so convincingly into thinking we are in control, fabricating and internalizing whatever narratives that will lead us to believe we, amidst this chaotic, unforgiving existence that we call life, have the power to determine our own fate. And while doing so, making something beautiful out of it.

Vicariously

If we could, just for a moment, live vicariously through someone else,  

to witness all the trauma in the blink of an eye, every pang of suffering, the harrowing glimpses of all that has eaten away at one’s soul, 

to feel the seething rage of all the hatred, frustration, and anger over the years pulse through our veins, 

but to also experience all the elation and joy someone has ever experienced that has given them light and a reason to live,

to allow all the love, affection, and compassion warm, caress, and make tender our heart,

our experience of life as we know it would no longer be confined to the selfish boundaries of what we define as “you” or “I”; if we wholly internalize the identity and consciousness of another person as we would if we were them, we can experience life as “us.” We would subsequently achieve an ultimate form of empathy where conflict ceases to exist. 

This will never happen. But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps that is the source of magic in human connection—this tumultuous journey of simultaneously discovering our own identity and that of others solely through trial and tribulation. All of our foibles, our idiosyncrasies, and our sins constitute these jagged interstices that deform the light of an unadulterated, unfettered truth and understanding of humanity. It could be that we’re not meant to comprehend such a truth, and we’re just not meant to truly understand each other. It could be that, despite all the suffering, death, and strife it causes, this need to overcome dissension is all that gives us meaning, and all that gives us a reason to love.

Impulse

It may be inevitable that we let our emotions cloud our judgment. In the heat of the moment, in the face of someone shaming us and shouting at us, deriding our thoughts and feelings—our consciousness aroused as it is bombarded by this torrent of intense stimuli—it can be notoriously difficult to countervail our impulses to fight back, or to cower away. 

We can always try to remind ourselves to eschew the temerity and impudence of the lizard brain, to instead make incisive rational arguments and put aside our personal feelings, but reminding only goes so far in the face of overwhelming, uncontrollable emotion. Like many facets of our lives—perhaps it is the meaning of life for all we know—we fight an uphill battle against ourselves and our very nature to do what we know is right. So many of us fall prey to our selfish desires and impulses, whether porn or sex, drugs or alcohol, social media or gaming. As it turns out, the pathway to addiction looks eerily similar to the pathway to ignorance.

In the same way we strive to address the clearly unhealthy addictions of our lives—which fundamentally is an exercise of self-awareness and impulse control—we can simultaneously strive to combat our irrationality and intolerance.

The truth is, all the truth is already out there.

We have several millennia worth of knowledge at our disposal, thousands upon thousands of seminal works from thinkers far more erudite in the human condition and with far more wisdom than any of us could ever hope to have. Confucius, Buddha, the Bible, Laozi, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Kant, Hume, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Jung—these are just the most venerated ones; there are tens of thousands more. And yet, most of their work, while timeless in their own right, for the vast majority of people today, remains fatefully consigned to the dustbins of history, which itself has become an esoteric, desolate realm of study. 

It is incredibly doubtful that any particular ideology or belief system will become universally accepted and inculcated into every member of every society, but it doesn’t need to be. In fact, that would be counterproductive; because of the incredible variety of characters that inhabit this earth, variance in belief must correspond accordingly to accommodate such variety, paving different paths albeit to the same destination. 

But the point is that we’ve already asked all the hard questions of life, and we’ve already attempted to answer all of them. The fountain of truth is brimming with knowledge, overflowing with wisdom, and far more accessible to the common person today than at any point in our entire history. And yet, most of us choose not to drink from it. We cannot come to the naive and contemptuous conclusion that all these great thinkers of the past are irrelevant in today’s circumstances and imperiously claim we know better than every single one of them, lest we compel ourselves to relearn all the lessons that our ancestors sacrificed everything for, fighting tooth and nail to learn them in the first place.

The hardest part of my life

Is learning to quell my emotional reaction to disagreement.

Being on the extreme end of the spectrum of agreeableness, I have to constantly reconcile the necessary (sometimes completely unavoidable) interpersonal dissension with the desire to question others’ beliefs to learn more about the world. 

The reason I shared the quote on the previous post was because I’m predisposed to make disagreement or apparent conflict a larger problem than it is; I am prone to dwelling on the minutiae of those past interactions and amplifying the very visceral stress of the emotional tension and confrontation—a frantic scry revealing lost friendship, a harrowing premonition of continued conflict, a debilitating, insuperable but entirely contrived despair. These types of thoughts have haunted me for almost a decade. In the past, I would generally steer clear of confrontation and being the primary instigator in the provocation of a conflict, but as I mature and recalibrate my responsibility as a human being, I now recognize the value in being able to discern the decisive frames of the inevitable discord of our social interactions wherein we can each take the opportunity to learn something new from each other—to build each other up in a way that allows us to mutually benefit by learning to better navigate the world and gradually extricate this bipartisan, polarizing notion of “us against them” from our disagreements. 

But I know that it’s inevitable that I will end up ruffling some feathers, that I will inexorably sever the emotional ties of some of my interpersonal relationships; the years that I’ve spent as a manager have to a small extent inured me to such discomfort, though.