Salamu
Perception is a funny thing. One person will see a potato as
a source of nourishment while another person sees it as a dirty vegetable. Technically
both of these aspects of the potato are correct, it just matters on the point
of view you are looking at it.
I must say that I have a unique mindset when it comes to
many things. I am not your conventional person
who will think in one particular
way. In fact, many people ask me if I go home to a mental institution every
night. I think that my rationale is quite revolutionary, others beg to differ.
Take for instance night clubs. Many people think night clubs
are social gatherings. But there is no way on earth that a night club is
anything but a social experiment.
A social gathering is a gathering of two or more people
where a variety of events can take place. A braai (which is a barbeque for you
non South Africans) is a social gathering. Here you can drink, dance, eat,
watch sports, hit on women and perhaps see some action. There are very rarely
fights at braai’s.
A social experiment is a situation where limited activities
are on offer in order to see the human reaction to things. Realistically, there
are only three things you can do at a club: drink, dance and hit on women. People
go to clubs and dance as some form of perverse mating ritual which will hopefully
attract the fairer sex. If this is successful and you get some action, you will
no doubt then get into another ritual of dominance with a guy that has had his
eye on her the whole evening. For you uneducated out there, this is called a
fight.
Dating in a sense, is also nothing more than a social
experiment in order to see if you can effectively pursue a relationship with
the other person. A relationship is nothing more than a social experiment in
order to see if you can marry a person. This is the ultimate social goal that
most humans aspire towards.
And this is just conventional dating. Now internet – or social
media dating – is even more of a social
experiment. With conventional dating, you get to interact with the person on a
personal level and you can see whether you are compatible. You make these judgements
on various factors such as her smile, her nature, her demeanour during the
dates, common interests and her personality. I recently joined Tinder and I
found that on Tinder, you make assumptions on a person’s look and nothing more.
What defines a social event from a social experiment? Well
the presence or absence of controllable variables. To get me to like a girl on
Tinder, three things need to occur: Does she have beautiful eyes, does she have
an awesome smile, and does she have a good body. If she’s blonde, it’s a bonus,
but it will not exclude a girl if the other criteria are met. With a
conventional date, it is harder to manipulate the controllable variables
because your personality dominates.
A club is a social experiment because the controllable variable
here is alcohol and the lack of other activities to entertain our primitive minds
other than dancing and drinking. It is easy to manipulate these variables. The absence
of alcohol frankly makes a club shit. But the absence of alcohol at a braai is
not such a train smash.
You need to look for common denominators with all of this. And
the overriding one is emotion. Which is why dating is nothing more than a
social experiment, marriage on the other hand is less so because emotions are
settled down significantly from when you were dating. The overriding factor at
a night club is emotion (how you feel towards a song, how you feel towards a
girl, how you feel towards getting involved in a fight) there are far less
emotions involved at a braai.
How do you know the difference between a social event and a
social experiment? There is a very easy test you can conduct which I call the
Judge Judy test.
Judge Judy is a US television show based on a judge who
rules on court cases brought before her. She needs to do this unemotionally. I often
find myself sitting and watching Judge Judy and making my own mind up as to
whether the person is guilty or not. I do this without having any previous
training in law and I am only using common sense. This is also done
unemotionally.
So the Judge Judy test is: look at the situation or event
and UNEMOTIONALLY force yourself to look at it from the point of reason of
common sense and then make a judgement call on the number of controllable variables
are present. If there is more than two, it’s a Social Experiment.
Mei jua daima kuwa kabla yenu, na vivuli nyuma yako!
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