Why we are the way we are!

The focus of this article will be a book I finished reading a couple of hours back, although the thoughts are really an amalgamation of four books I have read recently - The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Bhagavadgita by S. Radhakrishnan, The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen and Games Indians Play by V. Raghunathan, the book in focus here. These books have given me - iff I dare say so - a very good, if not thorough understanding of why people - specifically we Indians - behave the way do in certain situations. In fact, the book by Raghunathan very effectively explains why we are the way we are!

Raghunathan uses the concepts in Game Theory, prisoner's dilemma and iterative or multi player prisoner's dilemma - the latter being applicable to many real life situations we encounter - to explain the Indianness of us Indians. And what is this Indianness? It is our utter selfishness, our tendency to free ride, our tendency to maximize individual gains at the cost of others' losses, our tolerance towards injustice, corruption & unfair behaviour, our habit of blaming or pointing fingers to others for anything that goes wrong, our ability to talk a lot and inability to act - the list goes on! And yes, we can also be adamant enough not to accept all this or intelligent enough to rationalize this behaviour. You may not believe me, but Raghunathan will make you realize all this using proven tools.

If you have read about Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), you will know that the best solution to it is when both players choose to cooperate. That is the solution which will keep their losses at the minimum, but rational people will sometimes fail to see this! We have very few interactions of this kind in real life though. Real life situations involve many people continuously interacting with many others and that is where the Iterative PD comes in picture. That means one has to decide whether to cooperate with the other or not every time the two are involved in a transaction (which could be as simple as greeting each other), keeping in mind that this situation may occur many times afterwards. This is where one's character comes in play. The best thing to do in this context also, is to continue to cooperate forever and maximise the collective gains instead of giving in to the temptation of short term gains at the cost of hurting the relationship. And it is the latter that we Indians choose to show at all quarters in life owing to the qualities listed below.

We are among the most intelligent people on this planet, yet we fail to recognize the fact that defecting for a small short term gain will hurt our own future. And, we tend to do this a lot more as compared to quite a few communities from both the western and the eastern worlds. We also use our intelligence to work around all the systems we establish for collective good and make them ineffective, instead of concentrating our efforts on maintaining them. At times, our actions are motivated by our desires and sometimes contradict with our duty, yet we do not see anything wrong in them. This book will tell you why we fail to do the right thing, even though we are so intelligent. I feel, every Indian ought to read this and introspect on what needs to be done if we want to see a developed India.

I mentioned three other books at the beginning of this article. Let me establish the connection. The Argumentative Indian has helped me understand the ability of us Indians to argument. Amartya Sen gives a wonderful historical account of our argumentative tradition and shows how it helped India to develop as a secular society, where people with varied faiths and beliefs were allowed to live peacefully. He explains what drives our thinking and does not fail to mention the importance of keeping an open attitude towards the thoughts of others. Had I not read that book before reading Raghunathan's book, I would probably have not accepted his criticism of us Indians so easily. The connect with The Fountainhead is established when Raghunathan shows the importance of making objective decisions i.e ask yourself "am I doing the right thing" before you take any action and act accordingly irrespective of the behaviour of the others. That is what Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is - the epitome of objectivism. Raghunathan also establishes the connection between game theory and the Gita, when he explains how game theory validates the Karmayoga explained in Gita. This book reinforced many of my beliefs formed after reading the Gita.

I have always believed that books have the potential to change the way one thinks. The books I have read have changed my way of thinking steadily over the last couple of years. More thoughts and more books in the posts to follow!