A fine and insightful teacher that we admire said that she thought our greatgrandson would do well in junior high. She predicted that he would meet any bullying or ridicule with "humor and indifference". I was immediately struck by the phrase. What a great pair of tools!
I find that humor is excellent for increasing pleasure and diminishing pain. My wife and I see many things differently but we are increasingly able to use humor to compare and contrast ourselves. I personally find that I am a stitch inside my head. I am five years old one minute and 55 the next. My ego and basic drives depict me as a combination of Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison in the shape of Harrison Ford/Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then I stumble on the carpet or can't find my keys and the committee of myself disappears in a puff. Not to worry, my ego comes bouncing back with Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and John Kennedy. What's not to laugh?
But indifference? I hadn't thought much lately about that valuable tool. I used to come across the word often while doing background reading in decision theory and related psychological and economic writing. It is said that basically I like X, say tuna sandwiches, or I don't like X or I am indifferent to them. Indifference is not especially promoted in our lives. Ads are full of fake enthusiasm for this furnace over that or this car over that. In order to let people into our heads and lives, we explain what we like and what we aren't so pleased with. I have never tried asking my partner or my friends, "What are you indifferent about today?"
I guess one would naturally supposed that liked things and disliked ones form a minority of the possibilities and all those things one doesn't know about would be good candidates for the indifference pile. I took it as amazing that for virtually any topic, any proposal, any object, any idea, any person, I could quickly decide that I was attracted, favored it/them in some way, fancied it or did not. If not, I was either in a sufficiently negative state that I could tell I disliked or I was in a balanced or ignorant state of indifference. If I have never tasted tuna sandwiches, I may take a sort of automatic protective stance against what I don't know about or an indifferent one until I get further knowledge and reactions.
Indifference in humans seems related to independence in statistics and between variables. When two variables are independent, a value on one does not affect the value on another. When there is some sort of dependency or relationship, researchers are often happy. Relationships may enable understanding or control of something they are studying. However, independence is nice too, since the world is a little easier to understand if not all variables are related to all others. They may actually be but in the time span of our lives and in terms of human needs and interests, the relations may be so weak or minimal that we can get along treating them as non-existent.
Indifference has been of interest to decision theorist ever since 1947, when von Neumann and Morgenstern tried to write axioms capturing rationality. They thought that if I am indifferent between tuna sandwiches and ham sandwiches and indifferent between ham and chicken sandwiches, I had to be mathematically indifferent between tuna and chicken. My choices do often follow that pattern but in some cases I am indifferent between A and B but not when the choices include a third choice, C. When the context changes, my indifference may dissolve or weaken.
I think schools and colleges should endeavor to increase indifference and the ability to create inner lack of interest. A great many things in our country are rah-rah. We are told that we just HAVE to care. Our caring gets tired, stretched too thin. A brighter future lies in the direction of more indifference.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
I find that humor is excellent for increasing pleasure and diminishing pain. My wife and I see many things differently but we are increasingly able to use humor to compare and contrast ourselves. I personally find that I am a stitch inside my head. I am five years old one minute and 55 the next. My ego and basic drives depict me as a combination of Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison in the shape of Harrison Ford/Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then I stumble on the carpet or can't find my keys and the committee of myself disappears in a puff. Not to worry, my ego comes bouncing back with Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and John Kennedy. What's not to laugh?
But indifference? I hadn't thought much lately about that valuable tool. I used to come across the word often while doing background reading in decision theory and related psychological and economic writing. It is said that basically I like X, say tuna sandwiches, or I don't like X or I am indifferent to them. Indifference is not especially promoted in our lives. Ads are full of fake enthusiasm for this furnace over that or this car over that. In order to let people into our heads and lives, we explain what we like and what we aren't so pleased with. I have never tried asking my partner or my friends, "What are you indifferent about today?"
I guess one would naturally supposed that liked things and disliked ones form a minority of the possibilities and all those things one doesn't know about would be good candidates for the indifference pile. I took it as amazing that for virtually any topic, any proposal, any object, any idea, any person, I could quickly decide that I was attracted, favored it/them in some way, fancied it or did not. If not, I was either in a sufficiently negative state that I could tell I disliked or I was in a balanced or ignorant state of indifference. If I have never tasted tuna sandwiches, I may take a sort of automatic protective stance against what I don't know about or an indifferent one until I get further knowledge and reactions.
Indifference in humans seems related to independence in statistics and between variables. When two variables are independent, a value on one does not affect the value on another. When there is some sort of dependency or relationship, researchers are often happy. Relationships may enable understanding or control of something they are studying. However, independence is nice too, since the world is a little easier to understand if not all variables are related to all others. They may actually be but in the time span of our lives and in terms of human needs and interests, the relations may be so weak or minimal that we can get along treating them as non-existent.
Indifference has been of interest to decision theorist ever since 1947, when von Neumann and Morgenstern tried to write axioms capturing rationality. They thought that if I am indifferent between tuna sandwiches and ham sandwiches and indifferent between ham and chicken sandwiches, I had to be mathematically indifferent between tuna and chicken. My choices do often follow that pattern but in some cases I am indifferent between A and B but not when the choices include a third choice, C. When the context changes, my indifference may dissolve or weaken.
I think schools and colleges should endeavor to increase indifference and the ability to create inner lack of interest. A great many things in our country are rah-rah. We are told that we just HAVE to care. Our caring gets tired, stretched too thin. A brighter future lies in the direction of more indifference.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
