During my travels, I tend to encounter more than my fair share of stories. Perhaps this has to do with the choices of some of the locations I visit. While in Bengaluru, I was awestruck at the level of devotion many here have with respect to rituals. Rituals clearly are related to a certain set of norms of society.

It was a bit of a hike up the ISKCON Bengaluru (for starters, the temple is comprised of multiple smaller buildings and features several climbs of steps), till I reached the top. But what hit me was how this reminded me of a module back in Tembusu College, “Culture and Cognition”, taught by one of the most interesting professors I remembered. Examples of such interesting characteristics include how he asked if any of us wanted to try fire walking (with him) as part of cultural immersion.

I’m not religious. And when I used to have a dating profile (I no longer do, happily), there was always a question on religious preferences. Tellingly, there are two options for the non-religious (I cannot remember the options verbatim):

• Non-religious and non-spiritual
• Non-religious but spiritual

What is perhaps a logical inference of this is that even many of the non-religious do harbour certain thoughts that go beyond everyday sensory and physical experiences.

Religion as a Support Structure

The average person will likely face a number of negative experiences that will grapple them for a reasonably long period of time. These include the passing away of parents (we assume two), being unlucky (e.g. retrenchments), or simply being burnt out by the work they thought they would like to do. Other negative experiences can include the loss and erosion of identity arising from such negative events. For example, retrenchment in one’s fifties can severely impact one’s view of corporate life, and periods of unemployment do sap away at the mental psyche of such a person.

We cannot hope that all of these experiences can be prevented, and the impacts of said negative experiences can exceed what we may believe we can pre-empt. But perhaps, a support structure will help.

At the ISKCON Bengaluru, I was directed (like the devotees) to partake in a chant. (https://www.iskconbangalore.org/harinam-mantapa/). While I did not understand much of it, I paid attention to how seriously the devotees took said chant as they ascended the temple, prayed to the various Gods, and bonded around complimentary food after the day’s prayers. Strangers could chat over the vicissitudes of life just because they shared a common religion, and a set of common practices, never mind how devout they may be (nobody truly knows, anyway). This certainly validated my experience on Tuesday visiting the Chamundi Temple, where devotees scaled the hills just to worship another different God (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamundeshwari_Temple).

Surely there is a learning point even for the non-religious? Actually, yes.

Recall: Twitch Plays Pokemon

Ten years ago, during my varsity days, a social experiment known as “Twitch Plays Pokemon” (TPP) was developed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pok%C3%A9mon). Basically, anyone could go onto the Twitch chat, and submit a key stroke, which would then be used as input for a Pokémon game.

One interesting observation during the social experiment was how players began to interpret various seemingly meaningless instructions (e.g. to select the “Helix Fossil”, which was useless until it was revived by the archaeologist in Pokémon Red), as certain inside jokes, that began to create meaning on its own. Fans started to create meanings for various outcomes of decisions that were made simply by a collection of keystrokes from many individuals that were by and large, disconnected from one another (basically, no collusion).

But there is a certain takeaway I thought that was useful. Meaning can be created from nowhere, with terminology assigned to said meaning, which results in a common topic that unifies a group of people.

A “Two-People” Support Structure: Dating

Perhaps a simpler system to use to illustrate some of these concepts is in a two-body problem known as dating (physicists love two-body problems of many varieties). It is simpler in at least two senses: one, I only need to consider one interaction between two people, and two, I would at least be able to wheedle myself out of the complications of an interaction between two highly unequal entities.

At some point in getting to know someone, it is important to assess compatibility in a few key areas. A few of these are in values and principles. For purposes of this two-body problem, we shall assume that there are no overarching religious principles that may perturb this system in veering the alignment and discovery of values (clearly more Physics lingo here).

In such a case, it is clear that both parties need to find some way, in some form, to skilfully finesse for answers, lest serious talk becomes so serious that the romance gives way to… a job interview. Thankfully, there are techniques for this.

P.S. Not a dating coach. I cannot be held responsible for techniques that result in low effectiveness.

A World of Two?

One way of making the eliciting of serious topics such as values and principles less of an intimidating step is by the introduction of an intermediate layer. This is nothing more than an adaption of a problem-solving technique to reduce a milestone into multiple smaller ones to ease the transition.

In the absence of a perturbative force such as religion, we will have to create certain characteristics of said exclusive relationship. Ingredients of such exclusive relationship include the creation of unique vocabulary, memes only each other can understand and other tools that help us lighten otherwise fairly heavy topics. Examples that I have in store (but I cannot reveal the private keys, for clear reasons) include vocabulary for food groups, emotional control and play reward/punishment systems for certain traits. All these serve two important functions: creation of an exclusive world of two bodies, and creating a toolset to help make certain tougher conversations a wee bit easier.

One area I would like to muse on is perhaps, support.

The World of Two’s Support Structure

I recently had a health scare before being cleared by doctors to land in Bengaluru. The health scare meant that I had to stay in isolation for two days. At first, it sounded like a private room to finally catch up on my readings, but then the mood quickly degraded when I realised it was a temporary structure as there were no wards. In fact, staying overnight in a temporary structure involuntarily does nothing good to one’s mental state.

But it was a fateful call on the second evening that made me realise how much such support structures matter. Hospitalisation is clearly an example of an involuntarily negative experience.

But what I remembered quite vividly was how the unique vocabulary and memes my partner shared (and me trying to play along) which made the call quite light, and before we knew it, we zapped about 90 minutes of time. The fact that I saw her being able to make my stay feel lighter, distracting me from reality with the make-believe world of unique vocabulary, was itself very helpful support.

But wait… this sounds similar to rituals!

In fact, some unique vocabulary used in our world of two can logically be thought of as a ritual of comfort. And these are arguably more effective than generic rituals of comfort because of the direct link that said unique words must come from someone you love. So in some sense, I guess that hospital stay was a validation that we are doing a good job so far.

Back to the “Culture and Cognition” Trigger

We all like to think of ourselves as being the “normal” part of society. We grow up in some part of the world with various social norms, and we quickly grow to being accustomed by said norms. Later on, as we travel, we begin to discover that the world is quite diverse, functions in different ways, and at times, in ways that are at odds with our understanding on the constituents of normal functioning. But the end-result is that people miraculously manage to navigate life just fine. These naturally gives us reason to pause and challenge our assumptions on whether or not said norms are in fact, such “hard and fast” rules of our society. And much of my travels so far in India has, in fact, being challenging many, many rules of society. Culture is quite pluralistic, and how we think will indeed change depending on the cultures we grow up in.

But it would be a mistake to be dogmatic and believe that we should only live life through… norms. Especially for special relationships, it sometimes pays to create our own structures on what our norms should be, never mind what society claims on the “fixed milestones” to clear, or when to perform a grand reveal party just to lay claims to the “no longer in marketplace” tag.