∆ Emotional Utility….

Date: 31st May, 2006 Time: 8:21 pm Location: My apartment, Santa Cruz, Bby State: Just dried myself after getting totally drenched in the rain Mood: Something between happy and thoughtful Music: Pink Floyd (who else??) So, that’s the scene. Here I am, sitting in the cozy surroundings of the hall in my apartment with dim lights and enjoying Pink Floyd playing Coming Back to Life, along with the sound of heavy rains pouring outside, n ya urs truly has just finished his cup of tea and some nicotine I am really enjoying the rain pouring outside; after all it eases the pangs of summer heat. I am enjoying this act of nature…but think of it, just an hour ago I was standing outside my office along with my colleague Devendra, both of us totally drenched and waiting for some cab/auto etc to take us to our apartments and at that very moment, rains were supposed to be the worst thing that could have happened…just an hour ago, this very rain was so disgusting and within an hour it has become a thing to be enjoyed and appreciated. This suddenly makes me ask myself, “Is Rain intrinsically bad or it depends on the circumstances” or taking this logic a bit further,” Does our liking or disliking or our experience of joy or pain stand alone or relative to the larger circumstances in which they occur?” (Which explains the element of thoughtfulness in my mood) Now that I am in a complete rewind mode, drawing from my life’s experiences (which I must say has been extremely eventful, filled with some smiles (most of them on account of academic/professional success, TOUCHWOOD) and more than enough sadness (most, rather all of them on account of my fucked up personal life)…), I think our experiences of joy or pain are by and large relative to our overall state of being. True their stand alone magnitude does matter but as happens in Portfolio Theory, it is relatively insignificant enough to be ignored. For nerds seeking scientific rationale in it, let’s seek inspiration from fundamental micro-economics principles. Happiness is in some sense akin to utility so let us term it emotional utility. With that logic, sadness becomes negative emotional utility. Our state of mind is nothing but a factor of the circumstances we are in. Hence when we are happy, our total emotional utility is very large. Further if this happiness has accrued over a short period of time, which is due to occurrences of many sexy events in quick succession, the time equivalent total emotional utility or the average emotional utility is very high. Thereafter a stage comes, when any additional sexy event doesn’t add too much to our happiness which is simply due to the fundamental principle of diminishing marginal utility, which applies here as well…diminishing marginal emotional utility until a stage where it doesn’t add any value at all…for example..(I am sorry but I am taking an example of diminishing negative emotional utility…which in simple terms is nothing but too much of getting screwed in life)…”Ever heard of a prostitute complaining of being fucked”. Why is this so?....Think of it…simply because her total negative emotional utility has reached a stage where a delta doesn’t make any difference... and compare it to getting fucked as a stand alone instance…a simple case of plateauing of the total negative emotional utility curve vis-à-vis a position across the steep gradient part. Now u agree why I place such importance to circumstances being a major driver of the effect any instance has on us….