The Loops we live in

Do svidaniya means Good Bye in Russian, just like the 2008 Vinay Pathak movie Dasvidaniya, I have attempted a pun at this Russian greeting to mean “10 ways”.

Last week I visited Indonesia. This is the Tenth country I have set my foot in.(not counting Airports used for Transit). In these countries, I have seen a lot of different kinds of people and different cultures, different ways of life and more importantly the different set of rules people abide by.

One of the biggest curiosities of my life is to try understand why people behave the way they do. A HBO series (Westworld) that I recently started watching gave me food for thought in this perspective.

I believe both these sentences are damning critic of humans and human nature. If you strip away the makeup that everyone applies in the name of religion, race, ethnicity and culture, at its core every human is very similar to others. You can google for cultural differences between nations and you will find ample material to muse. I want to talk about similarities human beings that I saw where ever I went.

Every living thing in the world has only one primary objective and purpose. Well , not exactly one but 2 purposes. Survive and Reproduce. This is a loop we live in and are never happy to come out of. I use the word loop because it’s the exact word used to describe the pattern in West world. Some back ground in Westworld before we go further. Its a futuristic sci-fi show where a man creates a theme park kind of a place where there are robots(hosts) that look like humans. Have a little artificial intelligence to react and give improvised responses. Each host believes that they are humans. These hosts are programmed to play a role in a small plot that resembles a wild west country. This is their loop. Humans pay to play a part in this. But as human nature goes, humans go there to just whore around and kill. Now, when the customer/humans are done with their raping and pillaging of hosts, the company that runs the place simply resets the hosts back to the start of their loop.This is a very high level plot.  

Coming back to the real life, The basic human loop consists of Birth – Survival – Reproduction – Taking care of offspring – Inserting the offspring into the same loop as they live in – Die. To make it simpler to understand, the gold standard for an Male human being is to be able to earn enough to survive, ensure the blood like passes on. Now, let me rephrase it in much more simpler terms for you. Good job, beautiful wife, healthy & intelligent children, good insurance for a safety net for family, peaceful retirement and then a calm death. 

The finer details may wary based on which part of the world you are in. Eg: someone born in Somaliya would have more effort in some aspects like survival and someone born in the US may have different order of priorities. But the list is always the same. 

Now the rules might be drastically different. India provides numerous examples when you want to talk about different cultures.The regional and religious differences mash together a bunch of illogical rules that people set for their loops. Hindu’s are not supposed to eat Beef and Muslims are forbidden to eat pork. A person is considered bad if he consumes alcohol or smokes. But for Sikhs, drinking is fine but smoking is a no no. For Muslims drinking is a sin but smoking and whoring are not. 

Eating habits are not very serious thing. Lets take a much more serious matter. A suitable mate. Muslims can marry a cousin from Maternal line but not from paternal line and its vice-versa for the Hindus.If you expand the sample size. In US, it is OK to marry your step sibling. 

This is just the tip of the ice berg. There are so many permutations and combinations that would leave even a mathematics professor scratching his/her head.These restrictions were put in by some tom dick and Harry. Since humans are comfortable doing what they are told to do when in a dilemma, they are more than happy to continue living in their loops and make every effort when there is some situation that threatens to break our life out of this loop.

The Loop Breakers

Just like the periodic table, everything has exceptions. There are lot of people who break away from their loop.In other words, they don’t feel the obligation to live by the rules of the land. I’m not talking about law breakers. This is a level beyond that. 

Now to the other series. The Game of thrones analogy. Game of thrones has had a truck load of characters and several truck loads of interweaving plots that bring these characters together. But the most interesting thing of all is that all the Major surviving characters in the story have one thing in common. They broke their loops. Any person in the story that stuck to their loop is either irrelevant or dead. Talking about all the characters will take a lot of time, so I’ll just mention the loop the characters were supposed to be in and if you know the show, you’ll know how they broke their loop. 

Sansa Stark: A gullible girl with dreams of marrying a prince and becoming a queen, used by different people. Her loop was being innocent, suffering and becoming a tool that others can use for their gain. She broke out of her loop when she killed her sadistic husband.

Thyrion Lannister: Son of the most powerful person in the kingdom, ill fated to be born a dwarf and being hated by Father and Sister. Blamed by them for his mothers death. A person who decided to piss on the world that laughs at him, spending almost his entire life with fucking and drinking. His loop broke when he realised that his sister would goto any length to see him dead.

Arya Stark: Tom boyish daughter of a Lord who got himself killed because of his honour. Thrown into the harsh realities of the world with no one to help her out. She shattered her loop when she realised that she will always be a Stark.

Jon Snow: A bastard Son of a Lord, hated by his step mother decides to join an order of men who gaurd the seven kingdoms. This was his attempt to get away form his identity as a bastard. His loop broke when he was betrayed by his own brothers for doing what was right.

Theon Greyjoy: One of the more complex loops. A boy taken away from his family by the Starks who defeated his father. Raised as a ward. Lives in a perpetual identity crisis on where his loyalties should lie. He tries to prove himself as a worthy son and falls down a rabbit hole of one bad decision after another which leaves him with a broken body and mind, full of guilt. His loop broke when he realises that the only way to loose his guilt is to correct his mistakes and that he can be both a Stark and a GreyJoy.

Jamie Lannister:  The most complex character I have ever come across in any form of literature. If I ever meet JRR Martin, I would ask him to wait a moment, buy a hat and return to give him a Hats off. My favorite character of the show. I cannot describe his loop in a couple of lines. It may take a couple of paragraphs. 

Are you a bad person if you are willing to kill someone to protect the love of your life? Are you a bad person if that someone you try to kill is a child? Are a bad person if that someone you loved is your twin sister? 

Are you an honour less man of you kill the person who wanted to kill your family? Are you an honour less man if that person is the king? Are you an honour less man if that person is someone you vowed to guard and protect?

A hapless man who ended up being in love with someone who he was not supposed to and then ends up doing things he doesn’t like to protect that someone. He to keep enduring the insults, lack of respect and the opinions of everyone around him. His loop would have been to stand by his sister till the end. 
He broke out of it when he saw through his sisters intentions to use him for what she wants. He was able to get out of his loop when he realised that his sister was not someone who truly loved him.

I did not include Cersei and Daenerys on purpose. Because they are still living in their loops.  Cersei is in an obsession of I, Me, Myself. She wants total power at any cost. Daenerys is in a similar loop to become the queen of 7 kingdoms. Her loop is that she is the true heir to the throne and only she can bring peace to the entire world. So based on my assumption, both will die.

Luckily the people in the real world who prefer to live in their loops do not die untimely deaths. They just remain irrelevant. So, my point here is that where ever I went, the majority of the people I saw were the ones who preferred to walk in the direction their life takes them and a handful who actually take their lives in the direction they want to travel.

So even though I have observed people from 10 different nations and had interactions with people from a few others in line of my work, there are only 2 types of people I saw. So its not “Dusvidaniya”, its just “Do Vidaniya” which is 2 ways in Hindi or If I want to be obsessed with word play ‘Dos Visdaniya’ (Dos = 2 in Spanish). The loop dwellers and the loop breakers. So,Which one are you?