Save my Soul

Consider this hypothetical situation: you are in a boat big enough for two with plenty of supplies. A few metres away there is a woman drowning. Do you save her? And if you do save her do you share your surplus supplies with her?
To me, it seems a simple enough question to be answered with a resounding - of course I’d save her and subsequently offer her something to eat. I wouldn’t even think twice. After all it’s the obvious, civilized and decent thing to do!

Now consider another hypothetical situation. You are walking down the street and you see a starving beggar a few metres away. Do you walk up to the beggar and give her some money or food?
Hmmm. I’m not so sure this time.

But why this doubt? To my mind the analogy holds. Then what could be the reason for such a stark paradox in my actions?

On some introspection I reasoned that I was probably unwilling to lend a hand to the beggar as there was no guarantee that my ‘sacrifice’ of some hard earned money would ensure the beggars prolonged survival. She’d probably end up that way the next day as well.
But then is that reason enough to walk away and not to do anything? If someone had told me that the drowning woman was of a suicidal bent and had tried this several times -would that be reason enough for me to turn my back away and leave her to drown? Certainly not!
Thus the possibility of future survival did not solve this paradox.

Another possible reason for this behaviour could be that there are just too many starving people around. I can’t save them all can I?
But then by that logic if there were a hundred people drowning in the sea that day I would not save even the one I had space for because – I can’t save them all can I?
So once again the logic doesn’t hold up.

After similarly dismissing several plausible theories I was left to just one conclusion - I just don’t see the starving beggar any more. No doubt she is there, no doubt I have looked at her, but sure enough, I just fail to see her.
Years of seeing this woman at the corner of my street and at the corner of almost every street in this country has sensitized me to the very real and terrifying face of poverty. My defence mechanism simply disallows me from recognize this face anymore. For being the civilized, decent person that I am I would never leave a woman to drown; it would be unthinkable.

Hence, getting back to the boat analogy, would that mean that if I saw enough drowning women for enough time there would come a point when I would no longer lend that obvious civilized and decent hand?
Further extrapolating, that would mean that if I am exposed to certain actions, no matter how vile and deplorable, for some amount of time, I will no longer find it to be unacceptable and allow it to go on unhindered

Save my Soul indeed!

Everyones an expert

Have you ever noticed how we as people grant an overwhelming importance and subsequently display an overriding dependence on so called expert opinions in our daily lives? In fact, even very fundamental aspects of our worldview such as developing nascent beliefs or even giving acquiesce to a particular object/action/person are largely moulded by the “experts” around us.

Take for instance the craze we exhibit for award shows, be it the Oscars/Filmfare, Grammies, Bookers, Miss World, Nobel prizes, the list is endless.

But the truth of the matter is that every single individual is biased. I am not alluding to a conspiracy theory of deceit and corruption but an underlying human fact. Every single individual’s outlook is heavily skewed and this is primarily because of the unique set of circumstances and stimuli he/she has been exposed to throughout their lives. This is a continuous process that results in a constantly evolving set of individual characteristics. This bias is not limited only to some of these fundamentals, but it is a fact that a particular individual if exposed a particular stimulus at different times of the day, under varying ambience or in different moods will display differing reactions to the stimulus. Thus, there is a multitude of factors that go in forming judgement about a particular stimulus.

The above mentioned award shows dole out honours on the recommendation of a panel basically consisting of a set of inherently biased individuals expressing a very personal (thus naturally biased) opinion, about highly subjective (thus open to biases) subject matter. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and a series of flaws in a system certainly do not make it correct, but in fact render the entire system and its outcome, essentially, meaningless.

If I have watched a movie which I have found to be the best I have ever seen but the “expert” panel at the Oscars deems it unfit to even qualify for an award, should that detract from my experience or opinion of that movie? Or, conversely must an Oscar wining movie about, say, a dysfunctional American family (American beauty) necessarily evoke a special interest in me?
Must my opinion of Eminem, whose lyrics I can barely understand let alone identify with or appreciate change when he wins several Grammys?
I couldn’t go past 30 pages of Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel winning piece of literature – “My name is Red,” even after two enthusiastic attempts. Does that mean I am an imbecile?

I have seen photographs of the Mona Lisa. At the risk of confirming my stupidity beyond all doubt, I will share with you my hitherto closely guarded secret – I really didn’t think much of it. In fact, with all due respect to Mr. da Vinci, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. But as it the best painting ever painted (I do not know who decided this) I am pretty certain that the next time I find myself in Paris I will join the over 6,000,000 annual visitors at the Louvre for a rendezvous with Ms. Lisa.

Thus I should opine that expert opinions and award shows are completely irrelevant to me and possibly this hypothesis will hold true across the multitudes. One size cannot possibly fit all no matter how much we try to make it so. And thus the opinion of another however highly decorated cannot take precedence over our own.
Yet the fact of the matter is that movie and record sales jump after winning an award, beauty queens become messiahs and Nobel laureates, legends. And the ironic part is that it is we the multitudes, for whom all this is irrelevant, confer this status upon them.

“It is not the medium, but the quality of perception and expression that determines the significance of art” – Bill Waterson