CURIOUS WEEKEND

Human Nature in Isolation and Interaction

Hello reader, I hope you had a curious and productive week? I did. I accomplished a lot including a group project where we went into the streets and shot a documentary video. The energy was massive.

For this curious weekend letter, I just want to share a little insight from my week and my recent lifestyle.

So, I have recently found a new location, an eatery, where I go, sit, read, and quietly observe. I was very happy to find out that the eatery allowed people to sit idly by without ordering anything. This is an important infrastructure to my intellectual life: a place where I can do nothing- no activity at all.

My moments in the eatery tends to end with a nice conversation with folks. Now I have a reason to be rich: so that I can pay people for great conversations. Anyways, this is all by the way.

My leisure moments have helped reaffirm my belief about human nature- that the man who is hidden from the public eye and interaction is a different man in the public eye and interaction.

No, I don’t mean this in the sense of hypocrisy. I mean that human nature in isolation behaves very differently from human nature in interaction. We behave differently when left to ourselves than when we interact with others and groups.

This difference is important to curb any errors in deductions and inference. To assume what a man’s public behavior based on his private acts is to assume in error. People blend into groups and behave differently. It is like some adaptive mechanism kicks in and we are transformed.

If you want to know the totality of human nature, you must observe it in public as well as in isolation. You must carry out your study in these domains. Your result in one domain is scarcely transferrable to the other. That is my little insight.

Do well to have a curious weekend. Read that book. Listen to that podcast. Try that new skill. Visit a new place. Refresh your mind. Have a great weekend.

Yours,

Jegdy