I’ve finished reading the latest post for several times to make sure I grasped the idea.
It is indeed a much darker piece, and I see the different “layers” or “aspects” of “friendship” it conveys. And I agree with Harwood’s statement:
“Relying on mere friendship to get us out of this mess is, as a piece of friendly advice from me to you, naïvely and overly optimistic in a way that brings us right back to the critical thinking of Voltaire’s Candide. “
I’m an engineer and engineers have this habit of looking at or analyzing things in a more “cold blooded” scientific or “data driven” way.
Thus I look at this humanly term “friendship” in a way that — it is just a mutual emotional “deposit” and “withdrawal” interactions and dynamics between two human beings (or animals). It is part of the evolution to ensure the bigger goal of the entire species — whichever species evolve to have the least selfish or destructive behavior; it is more likely to survive long on earth.
Whenever we show kindness or help someone, it is a gesture of “depositing” something good into that person’s mind; whenever we do something bad to someone, it is also a gesture of “depositing” something bad into that person’s mind.
Humans (or more broadly, animals) are “mirrors” to each other — when someone did something good to me, I feel the need to pay him back; when someone did something bad to me, I want him pay too.
This comes (or evolved) no surprise, because this mirroring “Tit-for-tat” (or “deposit/withdraw”) behavior is actually the best strategy according to the Game Theory:
With this mental model set, we could now easily explain all the possible combinations or dynamics between all these layers or aspects or interactions in “friendship” — with some simple idea also brought from banking/economy:
Imagine there are A & B,
A continuously deposits lots of good things (love, money, education) into B;
Imagine B is the “bank” of A; Could A _not_ expect any return from B but just pure “investment”?
And if A _is_ in the end expecting some return, what is his expected “interest rate” or “ROI / Return On Investment”?
Is this expected “return” from A aligned with B’s or B’s capability to *deliver* that level of return?
Should B return less (lower interest rates) or pause returning when he is in more difficult situations — is that reasonable?
Should B return more when he is more capable, and in another tit-for-tac, A should also invest more? How much is “more”?
If B somehow not returning (or simply not able to return) “enough” according to A, was A exploited? Or Should A feel exploited?…
We could easy ask tons of questions and quickly they would just cover all the “aspects” or “layers” of “friendship”.
Just like the central bank raising or lowering “interest rates” — As Warren Buffet once said: “interest rates are like gravity”, during this mutual deposit-withdrawal, tit-for-tac interactions between human beings, the “interest rates” and the expected vs. actual acts like gravity curves the spacetime between A & B, this determined whether this “relationship” or “friendship” is a healthy one like the moon orbiting the earth, planets orbiting the sun; or collide and collapsed into a black hole.
On the other hand, with regards to the topic of God and time — I’m not religious despite my parents believe in Buddha 🙂 — I’m long fascinated by Einstein’s theory of relativity, which suggests that time is not a linear progression but rather a dimension of spacetime, implying that the past, present, and future exist simultaneously.
For example: when right here right now we stare deep into the night sky, we are actually seeing the “past” of many stars, their dying lights are just able to reach into our eyes after so long a journey in the universe or spacetime. And there are all the fancy phenomena about time dilation when objects speed up…
Hope all these fun thinking brings some amusement to you. Have a nice day!
Best,
Yihua ( From Beijing – June 11, 2025 )
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BILLY’s RESPONSE to YIHUA’s LETTER:
To me, YIHUA, you have been, most caring, kind, helpful, and “TOTALLY WARM BLOODED “
Cheers with warm affection always,
Billy – June 11, 2025
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