My Ever-changing World Order ... 2011

I live in a world – my world. It is made up of the geographical and social environs – the near and dear ones, the objects around me, the legal and social constructs that I am in. It is my frame of reference, and I am in its center. Not that the rest of the world revolves around me, but I have my vantage point from where I see the rest of the world – this includes my preferences, biases and perspectives; and the color of the lenses through with my eyes perceive. What I don’t realize is that the people in the rest of my world have their own worlds that they are in the center of. And their worlds have their respective preferences, biases, perspectives and different colored lenses of vision.

I neither have visibility to their worlds, nor the ability to put myself in their shoes. Thus we all interplay, in a universe of incomplete information, abundant with assumptions to fill the void of ignorance. In mathematics, there is a notion called Game Theory, in which two or more players perform their “best” actions given their incomplete view of the behaviors and responses of the remaining players. Life is a “game theory” scenario with infinite players and infinite possibilities.

Events in life provide us data points to refine our assumptions. While we will never know the complete behavior function of individuals in our environs, the data points provide hypotheses of people’s behaviors – hypotheses that stand to be verified or falsified through additional stimuli and responses. Sometimes, we are pleasantly surprised. At other times, we are utterly disappointed. This constant refinement of my world through the incessant flow of information keeps my world changing. Because, I am static at its center!

While I recognize my feebleness to make a change to my world, I do have control on my own responses to the stimuli I receive. I can decide how I should emote in my world. I can see my involuntary reactions. I can keep the positive ones and make an effort to curb the negative ones, recognizing always that no experience or situation will repeat exactly. What will improve successively is my ability to control myself, increase my voluntary responses, and decrease my involuntary ones. I can, thus, change my world – for the better.

Fast forwarding some years presents an interesting scenario. Selective memory loss will wipe out parts of my world. Degenerated neurons may process my stimuli in ways I cannot anticipate. It will be a very different world. I am hoping that I will, at that time, have the faculties to look back and amuse myself about the enormously warped world I lived my entire life in!