Stone Cold Shoulder

In a completely logical world, we would not have friends. (A completely logical world being one which people do not do things for emotional reasons, and ignore the influence of them.) A logical person would instead have associates, people who they would meet for information, nothing more.

No one would get together for fun, but instead for a purpose. We would congregate to discuss problems which face us as a whole, and we would do things that would benefit us and society. Games would not be played, and cards would not be dealt. Instead, we would increase our lifespan at the gym while casually discussing the existence of an almightily being with the chap whom we may never meet again, but just happened to be riding a stationary bicycle next to us.

Indeed, friendship would be pointless. If you felt emotion, you would act illogically. In essence, we would be weakening our self, corrupting our pure state of logic with petty whims. Besides, friendship requires risk, and emotional risk would be pointless as it would only lead to the potential for emotional gain, and emotional gain does not provide a logical person with anything. Truly, friendship is pointless if a person is logical.

Instead, your relationships would be trivial, both people only talking if they got knowledge out the endeavour. It would illogical to fraternize with people who could not benefit you with knowledge, and so the world would become highly divided. We would separate into classes of the most intellectual, and the least, with all the hues in between. Sure, teachers would still be ever-present, as it would be logical to attempt to educate people as much as possible, (it would ultimately lead to the betterment of all society) but there would still be segregation amongst the upper echelons of the educated.

Friendship would only serve to make the structure less efficient, as the most promising of people would trivialize their time with discussions with people intellectually beneath them. The entire ideal of continual betterment through productive discussion would be in jeopardy. Thus, friendship must be eliminated in a truly logical society.

We do not live there, however.

If a person tries to live by these ideas (do not create lasting friendships as once you are done discussing things which benefit you with the person, they are no longer useful, and creating a friendship with them only means that you are emotionally attached and therefore have to stay with them after their usefulness has come to an end), they would most likely be rejected in our society.

Humans thrive on friendship. We create them even though they are riddled with problems. We need to know that out there, there is someone who cares for our emotional well-being, because our emotional well-being influences our productivity. If someone just formed trivial relationships based on the sole purpose of gaining information through them, then one person would feel like they were taken advantage of. It is rare to ever find a relationship of any kind dissolved by mutual consent.

Someone who does not care about your emotional state shows that they are uncompassionate towards you, and you become bitter towards them. We do not like people who do not value us, and we feel betrayed. However, there is no real betrayal, as it is their nature (I call Star Trek fans to the beautiful Scorpion monologue by Chakotay in Voyager’s Scorpion, Part I). Do we curse the wind when it blows in the middle of winter? Some of us might, but in the end we all realize that it will not change, and instead put on something warmer to protect our self.

Perhaps this is an instance where we must simply accept that some people do not wish to form lasting relationships with others. It is a shame though, as it means that while they will never feel the pain of being hurt by caring for someone and finding out that they do not care back, they will never be able to experience the elation when a friend helps them out.

And that is the true purpose of this blog: To say that we should appreciate our friends more. They put up with our faults, understand us, and even when we do something wrong, they still stick with us. For I may hurt you today, and you may hurt me tomorrow, but if we can not work through our differences, then we are not worth the breath of another. We all will stumble at one point or another, and what we need, most of all, is someone there, right beside us, offering a hand and saying “I forgive you for all the pain you have caused me.” That, is love. And truly, love is blind.