La Comédie humaine

La Comédie humaine is a collection of inter-related novels and short stories by Honoré de Balzac, a 19^th century French novelist. It is actually not funny (the title probably refers to Dante's Divine Comedy), but is richly amusing in showing how people can behave in different circumstances. It's a parade of characters and stories. In the last couple of weeks, I felt like Balzac, wondering about the way people think, act, and make decisions. I was particularly interested in how a coincidence of smaller events, half-understood and half-misstated phrases, accumulated tensions, and undefined relationships can all conspire together to create drama. The world of humans is truly unpredictable, and prone to disruptions. Whatever peace, whatever community we create together, is always fragile and in need of defense, maintenance, and constant restoration. And when people become closer to each other, it does not necessarily mean their relationships necessarily improve or become stable. Rather, the opposite is true: it is easy to be civil and generous with a stranger, with whom you have no overlapping interest or common affairs, and whose actions you don't need to understand. Once you become closer, and interact for a longer period of time, the Other comes into your scrutiny, and you are forced to make conclusions about his motives. The Distant Other is easier to like than the Close Other. I was always struck by the radical and pointed challenge of "Love thy neighbor," as opposed to asking to love the stranger, the traveler, and the distant.

Most people judge too quickly, because by nature, humans are story-tellers. If we know a little, have an incomplete picture, our brains just go on autopilot to construct the missing pieces into a coherent story. We MUST make sense, otherwise we are miserable. That story then takes on a life of its own, especially if it is emotionally charger. Do you ever become caught in a vicious cycle when the more you think about something, the madder you get? It's because no new information is coming in, and your mind keeps refining the story it has created, making it more coherent, more logical, and nastier. Once constructed, it becomes a framework for interpreting all the consequent interactions with the Other. The new events tend to strengthen the old frameworks, because they already come into a coherent narrative. Suspending one's judgment is perhaps one of the most difficult skills to master, hence the other most radical advice ever give to humanity: "Do not judge." Why? Because the initial story that you make up might be just wrong; it may or may not be accurate. Of course, we need to judge, but we also need to learn to not judge, or change our minds. If I learned one thing on this job, it is how easy for a misunderstanding to perpetuate, multiply, grow, and create a conflict.