People understand you from their level of perception. It is your responsibility to know exactly who you are, and not get lost in what they are projecting onto you. Of course reading & travelling extensively across aisle helps one out, as with more wisdom you stay balanced about any given subject. And sometimes even to counter narrative of false equivalence or whataboutary, which humans often draw parallel to justify their own stand. Say, even Hitler has to convince himself first before triggering WW2 that what he was doing at that moment, had proper reason according to him and it was well justified.
What I learnt over the years, no new information can enter in your nervous system that's not equal to the person's emotional state. Even if you give them the right answer to the problem, but they won't hear it because it's not relevant to the emotion they are experiencing. For example, to connect or to convince one, politicians create an environment where people perceive something that they want or desire, then they wrap their item into it and sell it to masses. They say, you can sway thousands men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. It's very similar to the experience, you feel anxious & at times you weep while watching scary or emotional movies despite knowing it's unrealistic, thanks to your emotional state. Sometimes you know, someone is praising you to get favour, still you fall on the trap. Reason? Happy hormones. e.g. uneven increase in serotonin & dopamine level.
When you analyse something with an emotional state, you are thinking in the past, as your emotions are record of past, and most of the time answers don't sit there. Just because your ex was bad doesn't mean your fiancee will be too, but often we become tentative, practice prejudices & compromise our future. Reason? Bad hormones. e.g. uneven drop in serotonin & dopamine level.
Air-Pilots or Eagles need to fly high from dark clouds, in order to have clear vision. Free the person from the past and they can see it from greater level of consciousness. For example, when you're young, you laugh about your childhood stubborn habits. And when you will become old, you might laugh at those call you're taking now, labeling them as unmatured.
I call it, Pragmatism vs Revolution, other calls it as Emotional Intelligence. Pragmatism is to control your hormones and keep it in check. Where as Revolution refers to extreme step on the spot. i.e. infuriating hormones on another level. And when it'll bounce back to common level again, you might feel sad about the same decision.
For example, Revolutionaries have the best slogans.
The Bolsheviks shouted “Peace! Land! Bread!”
Mao Zedong promised a “Great Leap Forward”.
Subhas Chandra Bose gave slogan, "Tum Mujhe Khoon Do, Main Tumhe Azadi Dunga".
Advocates of gradual change by contrast, find it hard to compose a good rallying cry; as it won't boil your blood, sweat & hormones.
No crowd ever worked itself into a frenzy chanting: “What do we want? Incremental reform! When do we want it? When budgetary conditions allow!” 😀
In University student life, for any instant rule changes by Vice Chancellor(VC), "VC Down Down" or "VC Zindabad" ignites, but VC bring the reform in upcoming 6 months won't appeal to mass students.😁
We can see that in election revdi culture as well, agricultural reforms vis-a-vis freebies without fiscal prudence. Instead of enabling framework of growth (say market access, infrastructure, new technologies, etc), govt and opposition both parties are giving freebies in name of XYZ schemes to masses, to garner populist votes and later becomes prisoners of their own instrument. For example - The subsidies to farmers on paddy in Punjab & Chattisgarh are not only hampering ground water table, but also hampering health as they are growing & consuming excessive of rice(full of carbohydrates) but they are lacking in proteins, vitamins & nutrients. For political parties, gifting fishes are easy transaction than teaching masses, how to do fishing. It's not only takes less ground level efforts but also ensures dependency of public over them. The problem is with both sides, demand and supply. i.e. public as well as political leaders. We often see, Public gives votes to those leaders who gives freebies, and not to those who toils hard to bring good reforms. We have seen poorly-directed freebies wreak havoc with state finances and have adverse consequences on the economies - as in the case of Sri Lanka, Venezuela, etc.
I do know, if not for government spending on food distribution and NREGS, the poor would have been worse off. The difference is very thin between where govt should help poor and where it should avoid leakages. The wrong resurrection of old pension scheme is one of the example which describes, a good politician is a bad economist.
As per an RBI report on fiscal deficit, the highly stressed states are Bihar, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, and West Bengal. A recent example of the USA Supreme Court’s rejection of the waiver of educational loans proposed by President Joe Biden is a good example of how the court should intervene in such populist measures.
Overall, my personal observation is most of the time, “Gradual incrementalism" works better and deeper, instead of knee jerk reaction which end up with no where but cosmetic change, or sometime even diverts the subject. May be the reason, Mahatma Gandhi's prompted to opt Struggle-Truce-Struggle strategy over consistent Struggle against British Raj because he knew prolong struggle may not possible for poor farmers due to lack of financial insecurity. One of the reason, civil engineers build houses one storey at times, or Software companies uses agile methodologies for developing softwares. They say, Rome was not built in one day. The best part in incremental decision making is, you've room for improvise. But again this is subjective, and one rule won't fit for all issues.
Of course, at times long incremental progress can also diverge path, if not properly monitored. For example - India Against Corruption Moment 2011-12 by Anna Hazare for Lokpal bill. As the time passes, the legit demand became cold & now we are happy with toothless Lokpal Act. The country's first anti-corruption body instituted four years ago (firstly appointed on 19th March, 2019) to investigate complaints against public functionaries, including the PM, submitted that "it has not prosecuted even a single person accused of graft till date". Institutions like such are reduced to mere parking slots of retired bureaucrats and reward reaping programs for showing loyalty towards govt of the day.
Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, in one of his book "Administrative Behavior" argued that decision-making is essentially the process of choosing between alternative courses of action or inaction. And he widely associated with the theory of bounded rationality, which states that individuals do not make perfectly rational decisions because of both cognitive limits (the difficulty in obtaining and processing all the information needed) and social limits (personal and social ties among individuals). For example - Indians might say Sachin Tendulkar the greatest cricketer, where as Australian may pick Don Bradman. They may also do cherry picking of facts, and weight their logic more, in order to prove only their choices are right.
During decision making on subject where you are the participant, our brain is always looking to make the story we've constructed in our mind as 'true', we call it confirmation bias. If you think positive or want to look things in a certain way, our brain will cherry pick positive past incident on that direction; and in case if you think negative, it'll recollect & roll-out all negative stuffs to further damage your courage. Mindset is what differentiate us from one another, make sure you’re giving it a positive one.
"Show me how it gets better than this!",
train yourself to say this out loud when things are not going well or when you’re in a dark place in your life. Instead of ruminating or recounting the misfortunes to a friend, try asking God, or the universe, to show you how it gets better.
Thus, mostly we take decision what suits us and serve our interests based on cost benefit analysis, rather what is good, ethical, or justiciable. One of the reason, from Bhagvat Gita to Buddha's principal, all hails practicing detachment. The answer lies in emotional detachment of all types of identity while taking any decision, to ensure rationality & objectivity, especially when it's not your private matter. Often, the moment we start scaling the consequences of taking that decision in pros and cons of our own interest, bias kicks in. The other perspective is, put yourself into boot of the other side of the table, then visualise & ensure what coming to that person is acceptable, when you've to make decisions between you and others, or between any two entities.
