All of us have heard leaders and management gurus talk about the art of decision-making, the art of judgment. But can we really decide how to decide, and that too in a dispassionate way? Obviously there can be no decision more vital, no issue more critical than Indo-Pak relations in today’s circumstances. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai have almost put the countries back to square one – age old blame-game debate. Everyone says how it is different this time – common man chanting ‘Enough is enough’. I don’t remember Indian people asking for accountability in such a staunch way. Caught off guard, the authorities are passing the buck to among each other with all fingers finally pointing at politicians who in turn have no where else to point but across the border.
I think the media has a very important role to play in this situation. With 24X7 coverage, and last mile reach, it can have great impact. Unfortunately, both sets of media, here and across the border have handled the delicate issue immaturely. There has been nothing short of direct allegations from both sides, with even respected journalists taking clear sides, when they are supposed to ‘report’ the incidents in an unbiased fashion. Not to down play the incident in any way, but the common man has not been more affected by this incident as compared to the terror strikes
It is man’s nature to search for the cause to any effect. He tries to reason out any manifestation to its last logical end, to find the cause, to understand why it happened. Another strong instinct highly ingrained in man’s behavior is to try to spot patterns – so that a bunch of things can be grouped together as the manifestation of the same cause and effect phenomenon. I feel this might be driven by the fact that for man, resources for gathering and processing information are limited, and he has to get the best idea of what is going on – hence the quest for singling out signal from noise. With both these traits, man tries to understand the behavior of matter, within his limitations, ultimately to manipulate the same to his advantage. Simply put, once man observes an object accelerating, he tries to find the force in action. Once that is identified, he then classifies it into gravitational, strong, weak, or electromagnetic force – the four broad categories of forces as proposed by scientists. Needless to say, the next time he wants a similar object to accelerate in a similar manner, he knows what force to use and in what quantity.
Sometimes, the quest for the cause and the pattern actually goes much beyond the actual effect. I think the media has leveraged this quest to their short term gain and the long term loss as far as Indo-Pak relations is concerned. Analysis done in the media has fed people with all the necessary inputs to satisfy their quest for the cause and pattern. But looking at it dispassionately, the media is doing its own cause-and-effect analysis, and now are maneuvering people’s behavior in a way to increase viewership. They have spotted a pattern which they are willing to exploit – knowingly or unknowingly, I don’t know, but nevertheless, is this ethical? This raises another important point - manipulating matter has been the focus of the physical sciences so far, but should we take science to its logical end – manipulating the mind? Isn’t the root of terrorism precisely doing the latter, though at one extreme of the spectrum?
Clearly, a lot of questions with not many answers. Coming back to the main issue in discussion, let me argue as my father put it – there is no decision devoid of emotion. A neuroscience study does support this stand. It has proved that a decision as simple and subconscious as recognizing one’s mother is not devoid of emotion – without necessary input from emotion neurons, one’s brain can not recognize one’s own mother. So why do people say that important decisions need to be made without emotion especially when science has potentially proved that it might not be physiologically possible at all. An interesting concept of ‘bounded rationality’ may be a better tool to attack the problem – a theory that says that though theoretically there is free will on an individual basis, one’s behavior is affected by the behavior of those around him/her. One is an actor and an observer at the same time. This puts certain ‘bounds’ on thoughts and actions of a person. So an emotionally driven , if an outlier, will correct itself as a diametrically opposite one is statistically equally likely, either in temporal or spatial dimensions, to counter that. A perfect example – Pak media vs the Indian media.
So hope for an extreme counter view, is that all we can do? May be the art of listening is more important. May be a disillusioning answer to the question – Two ‘wrongs’ might actually help toward a ‘right’.
