'To The Moon', the rules of modern love, and the purpose of life

So I just played this Japanese-made (but English language) game called 'To The Moon'. Japanese games handle emotional themes much better than American ones and they tend to have the courage to take risks when it comes to exploring sensitive themes. This can result in certain flop ideas within otherwise great games (such as the Metal Gear Solid series) as well as flop games altogether, but sometimes it results in beautiful works of art such as 'To The Moon'. Two scientists are hired (probably in the future) by a dying man to alter his memories so that he can die having fulfilled his ambition of going to the moon, by connecting a device to his brain. I had to play as the scientists who traversed through several memories across his life in order to understand why he wanted to go to the moon and which memories had to be altered in the initial stages so that he ends up in the moon in the later ones. <Spoiler alert> But it turned out that his desire to go to the moon wasn't exactly a desire to literally go to the moon, but a metaphor for wanting to be with his recently deceased wife, and it is possible that during his dying days he himself did not realise this. After their first meeting as kids staring at the night sky while atop a mountain near a carnival, they promise to meet on the same spot next year and possibly as a child fantasy they agree to: 'meet on the moon' if they were unable to meet the following year. This results in the dying man subconsciously wanting to go to the moon <Spoiler ends here> It all sounds very dry when typed out here but the game is a fantastic exploration of love and the purpose of life itself and the writing is intelligent enough to throw in some humour and practicality through the scientists' dialogues into an otherwise all-out romantic story.

 Now, I know that it's not exactly a manly thing to be talking about love and it is even less manly a thing to be writing about love but as someone who doesn't give a shit about such stereotypes, I will go ahead and do so. The hero 'John' likes the heroine 'River' not because she is popular in school, but because she is different. She doesn't hang out with the usual crowd or do the usual things that usual girls do. In general, this is seen as a bad thing in the society (to be more specific, a risky thing) and such people are seen to be more likely to be a liability than anything else. For John, this is a positive. River is not mundane or commonplace, but special and unique.

There are hundreds of people, magazines and blogs which advise on love. And almost all of the advice points to a certain set of consistent ideas. You and your lover should ideally be independent of each other emotionally and if possible, financially as well. You should keep a reasonable distance between you and your lover and not share literally everything amongst each other, in order to preserve a sense of mystery and attractiveness about the other person. The guy should have a strong set of guy friends and the girl should have a set of girl friends who would cater to certain emotional needs that the partner cant. Also, it is common for you to feel good about your lover only after a good number of mutual friends feel good about him/her. These ideas are commonly advised by everyone, and I have myself set similar targets in the past and will do so in the future as well to an extent. However, I wish to point out that this is not the only way of doing things. Love doesn't have to be between two independent people who don't need each other at all apart from for having fun. This is a commoditised and practical version of love which has a higher 'success' rate in terms of partners not splitting up as much as in other relationships. The success rate, if measured in terms of a less measurable but more relevant metric: pleasure for the lovers, would possibly point towards a relationship where the lovers are comfortable just being themselves instead of practical targets set by the society; One where both of them are completely open with each other and end up being so close that they cannot survive without each other. This is a riskier way to go about things (and the relationship will be more volatile; quick example of the passion of Maria Elena vs. Vicky, from Vicky Cristina Barcelona) but at least for some people the risk is worth taking. To put it simply, there are certain rules in life which we follow on the basis that the rules make us economically more productive as human beings and as lovers, more likely to stay together. We shouldn't mistake these rules as being able to give us happier and more fulfilling individual or love lives. Take a fucking chance and BE your unique beautiful self and fall in love with someone else who is equally unique and beautiful. You may end up being in a few impractical relationships and suffer a few heartbreaks but it's worth it if you finally find the person you're meant to be with (and it's worth it even otherwise because at least you tried). It all sounds a bit too romantic, but all I'm asking for is for people to be a bit more romantic than they are now, for - what is life about but loving and being loved?

Well, life's actually a lot more than about loving and being loved! .. but to go slightly off-topic before coming back, WE the people on earth are now richer than we have ever been before. There is also better technology than there has ever been in the past (some of the technological improvements don't translate into GDP and hence the separate mention). We are however, not significantly happier than we have been in the past (according to polls, and also.. common sense). Happiness of a certain kind can be attained through money or food or even having a functional relationship. But to be really happy in life you need a purpose, and you need love. There's sufficient psychological literature which suggests the importance of purpose for long-term happiness and Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which isn't without critique) outlines this through the term 'self-actualisation'. The mention of love along with purpose and thus its addition to the self-actualisation part instead of the 'basic needs' part is just a personal touch that I put in , which I believe is true for me (and possibly for some others, likely not a majority though). People are different in some ways (and similar in many other ways), but within a reasonable time of you life on earth you should figure out your personal values and the things that you are willing to stand up for. Your work should at least indirectly assist you in standing up for these values and help you in serving as a role model for others. We are social creatures however and we will need to talk to a large number of other people, belong to some groups and have different experiences before we have an idea of who we are and what values we believe in. These values would no doubt be influenced by a wide array of factors from your DNA to your personal experiences, but make you unique nevertheless. Copying others and doing things that the society does will help you get basic needs such as food, money and a sense of belonging - all without taking much risk, but doing more of it will not get you higher levels of happiness which purpose can give you. Now, being efficient and productive in life and feeling purposeful are indeed things that give you long-term happiness but for me that's still not enough.

I have to be myself, forget all the wisdom imparted by the society and practicality out of the window and fall in love, and not just have an efficient and functional partner. Love for me, is a crucial part of long-term happiness and as important as my purpose to life and my personal values. You may have a different idea about these things and all I'm saying is that you should strongly believe in them and have good reasons for doing so.

Middle-class morality, content neutral robots and Love

A philosophy where there are a fixed set of rules which clearly demarcate right and wrong, and those who either disobey any of these rules or are from a background sufficiently different (which makes them possibly have different values from the society in question) irrespective of whether they try to fit in to the society are shunned or considered inferior, depending on how different they are. Right and wrong are decided by the society at large and individual opinions are not entertained (unless the individual is very rich, and in that case people will at least act like they listen to him). Well, Nazism was at least more forthright when it came to what it preached. Maybe middle-class morality is just a milder version of Nazism.

Before I start out, I want to clarify - Do I hate middle-class morality? Yes. Why? Because it stands in the way of truth. Why do I care about truth more? Because the material gains from middle-class morality- the money, the friends, the security are all aimed at satisfying the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy- a part which is already more or less satisfied in me.

All of us have read about middle-class morality. It's what the rich and poor do not have. It's this set of values which exist due to some reason, which have to be followed in society. But why? It's possible that the only purpose of middle-class morality is to make the middle-class people richer than they are. But the thing about MCM (abbreviation for middle-class morality henceforth) is that it never lets you be happy. It doesn't let you be content with what you have. And that's because any hint of satisfaction or intrinsic happiness will prevent you from earning more and spoiling your children with gifts. And once indoctrinated completely, its difficult to break free of MCM and consider personal values or morals. Coming back to the purpose of MCM- the summary of how MCM works is this : (the first para kind of outlined the effects of this working) People live by rules set by the society. That doesn't sound too bad right? And the set of rules are more or less consistent across the world at an elemental level. For instance, you have to be polite to everyone you meet, or you have to study hard get good marks and marry an have children. Of course in some countries people are more individualistic or just have enough money to not care about these things and thus in the US or Europe you may not find as many people following MCM as in India. Now, these rules are aimed at letting you reliably access the wealth of the rich, with minimal risk. Study (education is good, but when it's purely aimed at getting reliable employment- MCM is responsible for that) -> Get a good paying job (pretty much the most important part of MCM's objectives) -> have a large number of acquaintances and a just a handful to zero friends (large number of acquaintances with whom you never really speak honestly even if you hate them - MCM wants to utilise these people when you are in need and allow limited utilisation vice versa as well. Having good manners, being smart and talkative etc. let you achieve this goal) -> Have children (this is again very important- since you lived your entire life according to MCM and basically did very little for yourself, mostly choosing arbitrary things such as the food you like and the movies u want to see and the like. Having children let's you focus your efforts away from yourself again. You now have to work towards making your children happy. Or else, the society will shun you and kick you out - without telling you of course; MCM does everything discreetly. ) -> Die.

My suggested alternative is : Live - > Do whatever you want -> Die. It's admittedly not as elaborate as MCM's plan - I devised it in 10 seconds (as opposed to the millenia which very slowly shaped MCM, while keeping the underlying principles same). Also, my alternative doesn't guarantee anything- you might end up being very poor and find no meaning in life. But it might lead to something very special. You might fall in love with life and everyone in it. It's kind of like setting your adolescent child free and letting him do what he wants. He might get fucked up but then he might do something fantastic as well. The same with MCM - if you set a person free from it.

Let's look at each phase- The studying and getting a good job part is pretty straightforward. In the sense that, there's nothing too middle-classy about it. And it's difficult to question the morality of it was well. Of course, the rich may let their kids do what the want and this might result in them starting their own ventures (where the middle class eventually get employed. But in a place like India, even entrepreneurship requires you to graduate from an IIT (it's not mandatory but it helps immensely in getting attention and funding) and so you can't really question this part. Unless you're a gifted footballer or musician or something. Or you want to waste away your life. Maybe it's the middle class moralist inside me taking over. Let me come back to the point- Next thing in line after getting a job is to have excellent social standing. Now, ideally your parents would've set you on track to be a social butterfly from a young age- else it's a little hard work after becoming an adult but hardly difficult. You need to now do basically what everyone does. Watch movies in the local language, eat what they eat, (When in Rome, do what the Romans do if you want to be part of their middle class- goes the wise old saying) and make yourself a review and opinion aggregator. You shouldn't really have any strong opinion on anything since it might hurt others.

Perhaps a second objective of MCM, now that I think of it, especially in India - is to have an old age where your children take care of you. In another country, this objective might be slightly differently defined as a happy old age where you have enough resources- and this might be a subset of being sufficiently rich in the first place, and thus may not warrant a definition separate from the first objective. And in a country where it is difficult to do business, the rich tend to get richer and the poor, poorer. Similarly, money tends to remain with the older people quite a bit as compared to more entrepreneurial economies where the young can start ventures and make money out of the merit of the ventures. Having an economy where the older people are more powerful has a definite impact on morality in a society- it is a relatively pessimistic point of view which gives more importance to money, fame and being 'settled', without taking much risk.

Let me digress a bit and talk about robots. So, Microsoft launched its 'teen girl' robot on Twitter called Tay, who can learn language and understand ideas based on what people tweet to it. Soon after, Microsoft had to take it down since she was turned into a Nazi-loving, racist and highly sexual creature with no regard for humanity. The whole episode reminds me of how people are more or less what society makes them to be. And the only difference between the average person in the society and you, is your personal values. If you don't have any personal values that stand out- you can be turned into things as evil as the Nazis or ISIS supporters and you wouldn't even know it.

Coming back to MCM to make one last point- people put a huge amount of importance on how the society perceives them. They have essentially no opinion of theirs which is truly their own, regarding anything. People pitch ideas to each other and reach a consensus on what is popularly liked. Things like MCM and general stupidity on this planet cause movies like Batman vs Superman to have a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 7.7 on IMDB. "The previous Batman movie- I think it was called the Dark Night, that was so cool. This one's not that great you know but not so bad either". I digress.

So what's wrong with a society filled with average people, some more average than others and the different ones living in shame at not being average enough? A lot of things, and as I'd pointed out earlier, anything above the bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which are not representative of the absolute truth of course, but fairly accurate in my opinion) is beyond the reach of MCM. But for me personally there are two very specific issues I have with MCM- One is that I cannot deal with fake shit. Fake manners, lies, talking behind people's back etc. The second and far more important thing is how MCM prevents people from truly falling in love. MCM imposes a set of expectations on your partner which are centred around what the society expects from an average person. It makes you and your partner average, alas but love is when you find the best person in the world. There is no love in loving a person more average than most- a shallow being with no individuality. And a person who is completely independent of idiotic societies for her self-esteem, and having original ideas; the confidence to stand up for herself and her people when it counts without worrying about 'what others would say' is the only kind of person I can even think of falling in love with. And for movie lovers, the trade-off between the comforts of middle-class life and it's reliability as opposed to wild and unhibited love is best portrayed in Vicky Cristina Barcelona- where Vicky falls in love with the Spanish painter Juan Antonio, over the her well-paid and well-settled American fiance, and in Before Sunset where Jesse falls in love with the French girl Celine, over his well-settled and well-paid American wife.

Elements of love

I love girls. I love the colour red. And I love my country. But what's the difference between these kinds of love? Are all types of love the same? I'm not talking about just love for people (which is often categorised as platonic and amorous)- I'm talking about what makes up amorous and platonic love as well. The building blocks of love, so to speak.
There are mainly three building blocks of love in my opinion and your love for anything or anyone can be explained by combining these three types of love in different proportions. The love for girls is something shared by most guys and is part of my natural instinct. I am not particularly unique as a guy, just because I love girls. This is the same with food- Most people like food since  we have evolved in such a way (people who hated food probably got extinct over time!).

Secondly you have personal preference. I like red. Why?- I'm not really sure. But I've liked red since I was a kid. I feel energised when I look at red. I can't really explain the love though. And, people on an average do not probably prefer red to other colours. It's just something that I loved from when I was a kid by virtue of my DNA (and possible the surrounding I grew up in as well- I won't be able to completely attribute my love to either). Similarly, I love spicy food. It just tastes much better according to me. It might be because I'm born as an Indian and it might be because I grew up here and it might be neither or a combination of both. But it's a personal preference.

The third kind of love is due to some effort you have put in and some compromises you make. You love your wife not because all your instincts tell you to love her. You know that she will be by you side always and so have decided to love her. Of course, your natural love for girls and your personal preference for her body type might help too but they're not the only things. Similarly, you love your country and family and neighbourhood partially because of the distinct effort your put int- a love that is guided by practicality rather than instinct.

So, while analysing how much you love something or someone- ask yourself this question. Is is mostly the first kind of love or is it mostly the third kind of love? You'll be much happier if you do things/spend time with people out of the first and second types of love rather than the third and such love is more long lasting and easily sustainable- this applies to jobs as well. Happy loving.

Dating outside your league

If all of us could think objectively about other people with absolutely no bias, there is a fair chance that a guy's favourite girl may not be his girlfriend and the person he admires the most may not be his dad, but an uncle or even a distant acquintance. However, thankfully for us, we have our weird biases which ensure that it is indeed our childhood sweetheart (or the arranged marriage spouse) whom we love the most in the world and by some amazing co-incidence, we all have, individually, the best parents in the world. The probability that we all believe this at an objective level is very low- and if so, would greatly undermine human capabilities for reasoning. And I strongly believe that we know better than to be so naive.

I say 'thankfully for us', because had a person not had this bias, he would be completely shunned by the society. A guy who doesn't love his home-made food more than anything else? A guy who likes his aunt more than his mom? A guy who likes a girl he last talked to 10 years back more than his current wife? What kind of idiot would he be considered as? An honest idiot, but the degree of idiocy is unquestionably monumental. A completely logical(a person who thinks in black and white, without the grays) human being would really struggle to survive in this world. There should be an evolutionary explanation for loving all that is related to yourself- your town, family, close friends etc. more than things that you haven't experienced yet, or things that you have experienced but are not close to- for example people beyond your league. And the explanation is probably just selfishness- you like people more when there is a higher likelihood of them being useful to you, and not because of them being good human beings.

When it comes to a guy's relationship with his girlfriend, while there can be moments when the guy sincerely believes that there is this one person he came across due to sheer coincidence and happens to be the most amazing female in the world, it is unlikely that he thinks the same for a majority of his life. Think about it- out of 7 billion people, and around 3.5 billion females- say around 800 million of an age you can marry- of which say 100 million can communicate with you- and you think you found your dream girl after meeting a few dozen? The times when you sincerely feel so can be attributed to errors in human judgement (which are helpful at several instances, including at this aspect of loving your not-so-perfect partner) . A point to be noted here is that there may be people who do not really care if their partner is their ideal match, and a good number of people I am sure fall in this category- but I am a dreamer, and I write for dreamers.

As you might have figured out by the previous para, I do tend to think relatively more in black-and-white than the average person.

One thing to consider, given the things I've mentioned above is what you would do if you met a girl (or a guy in the case of girls; I've not mentioned counterparts elsewhere but please consider everything as being applicable to guys and girls) who is amazing and you do not think that you deserve her? On one side, you can try and 'get' her and if you were right initially, she might end up being worse off than she otherwise would've, with a 'better' guy and a happier life in general. And on the other side you can ignore her and not take the risk of (i) trying and failing to woo her (ii) successfully wooing her and making her life miserable. Point number two may not be considered by a lot of people, but a person who thinks in black-and-white- a person who believes in objective truth, will. Human (and animal instinct) is to go after her and so, it is not very feasible to not try wooing her, since your heart often doesn't understand our brain. Meanwhile, your judgement about the girl being in your league can always be wrong and hence it might be correct to err slightly on the side of trying to woo girls than to not. After all, losing out on a girl because of your mis-judgement is a bigger loss than trying for a girl and not getting her because she's out of your league.

 Unlike my other posts, I do not preach 'answers' in this post, and I'm still looking for an answer to this question. I've obviously tended to 'try' outside my league, but I've always had my reservations (and probably will continue to have them) and never gone ahead with 100% commitment. Perhaps the fact that such a question has popped up in my head will cause me to be inadequate for the girl in concern. But should it? This, and the other questions I leave to the reader to figure out. And as a friendly advice, even though it is good (probably) to think about such things, when it comes to practice, always go for it :P And in case you don't think you'll find the perfect girl/guy, the only thing I can say is that reading this post was a complete waste of time for you, unless you start dreaming because of it.