Common Mistakes in Perceptions

I have spoken with many women on the subject of extramarital affairs (EMA for short) and whether it's the men or the women who have more affairs. Most women responded to me saying that men have more affairs than women. And that men are much more likely to cheat than women. "Men are just built that way, those #$%$$#@%" would be the typical response.

In another article I read today (written I think by a man), an explanation was given that EMA usually start at the workplace. And that in the olden days few women were found at the workplace and hence men had more opportunity to have affairs than women. The author continued that these days with women joining the workplace, their (women's) indulgence in EMA is also higher. If few women went to work earlier and hence (as per the author) few women had EMA, I wonder who the men (who were largely the ones who went to work) had affairs with...Maybe those few women who were having EMA's in those days were multitasking and having a rather busy social schedule. Seems possible?

I used to think that it's not possible that men can have more affairs than women. I defined an affair as a relationship between a man and a woman who are not married to each other. If a man has an affair with a woman, ipso facto, that woman also has an affair with the man. Hence the affair statistics has to be equal for both men and women (unless of course men had affairs with entities other than women).

I came across these nice articles:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/weekinreview/12kolata.html?_r=3&oref=slogin
• http://antimisandry.com/chit-chat-main/all-women-pigs-15124.html
• http://www.sensualism.com/sex/

where I find that other people have been thinking along the same lines as me!! While providing links, I am aware that the links provided in this post may not be available at a future date and you may be hit with a 404. These links were working at the time of writing this post.

The article below is based on a survey in India.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?239547
An interesting thing is the statistics published by the survey (as per the article, equal number of men and women were surveyed in each of eight cities across India). Some responses are categorized by gender. I am quoting a sample data from the article.

"How frequently do you have sex with your spouse?

Of those who said "once a week", males were 8% (of all males) and females were 21% (of all females)."

I wonder if it's possible to have data like the one above. I thought accurate data would show percentages for males and females to be close to each other. Did the respondents to the study provide accurate data? The total number of sexual sessions for men must be equal to that for women. And if the number of male and female respondents were same or almost same then... (This is what happens when you have emotional people do data analysis. Vaat laga di analysis pe. Read also http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/07/tu-mere-saamne.html). 

I happened to look at the outlookindia link today (March 2018). The data has changed from what it was 9 years earlier. Now the sum total of percentages across all frequencies (sex once a day, once a week etc) for men is 100, as it should be. While for women the sum is in single digits. Don't believe? Click the outlookindia link above. I wouldn't be surprised if the same set of people, who collected and analyzed the data, came up with a report on male and female fertility rates suggesting that males have on an average 3.1 kids and females have 2.3 kids.

Digressing slightly, recently I came across an interesting type of marriage in Saudi Arabia very similar to the one that Anil Kapoor proposes to Kajol in a Hindi movie (and Vijay to Simran in the original Tamil version). This is one of the best things I have heard about Saudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage  This is a cross between a marriage and an EMA.

While I was trying to look up paternity suits where the father learned that the children he was supporting was not his, I came across this interesting case http://www.canadiancrc.com/Magill/Magill_v_Magill_Judgment_09NOV06.aspx  where the husband and wife had three children during the course of the marriage. Later, the couple got divorced and the husband started paying maintenance for the children. Subsequently, the husband found out through DNA tests that he was not the father of the 2nd and 3rd children and that his wife had had an extramarital relationship with another man who was the father of child 2 and 3. (The husband was the biological father of child 1). The trial court held that the man should be paid Aus $70,000. The highest court in Australia turned this down, as I understand. 

If all this seems too diabolical and if you are spiritually inclined read this: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/03/shiv-mandirs.html.


Additional reading:

1. http://canadiancrc.com/newspaper_articles/Globe_and_Mail_Moms_Little_secret_14DEC02.aspx (Very nice)
2. Blood group mapping between parents and offspring: https://canadiancrc.com/Paternity_determination_blood_type.aspx 
3. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/200911/who-s-your-daddy-global-nonpaternity-rates
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/she-thought-she-was-irish-until-a-dna-test-opened-a-100-year-old-mystery/?utm_term=.d155546acb88
5. In India: The Indian Express: Oops! Girl found out her father isn’t her REAL dad during a BIOLOGY lesson.

What Prevents Success

Often we wonder why some people seem to have a constant paucity of time struggling to finish what they set out to do while others consistently seem to be able to do what they set out to do. While the former belabor the difficulties in their lives, the latter largely are on top of things. This difference is stark.

Would we all not want to be part of the second group? How do the two groups of people differ from each other?

Most of us have more demands on our time than we want to afford. We necessarily have to distribute our time, which is a scarce resource, towards all the activities that need our time.

People handle the above situation in two ways.

• Spend our scarce resources towards each of the activities (Note that I am using our time and scarce resources as synonyms) Or,
• Eliminate activities from our scope (by not doing it, by delegating to someone else / outsourcing it, by doing a shoddy job of it) after prioritizing our activities

People who choose the first option believe that (a) every activity should be done well and (b) every activity should be given equal priority. Note that (a) and (b) are conflicting. A high focus on (b) above usually leads to a low quality of (a). Now let's see why this should be so.

Let me explain this through an example. Let's assume we have limited money and that we have two options. Option A gives 10% return and Option B gives 20% return. What would our investment strategy be? Invest equally in A & B or invest only in option B? Would we not invest only in option B? We will eliminate option A from our investment strategy, right?

Investing our time (which is another scarce resource) among various activities is no different. We have to identify all those activities which demand our time that are similar to option A above (those that give lower return on investment) and eliminate them from our (time) investment strategy.

Insofar as money is concerned we know what we expect from investing money. We look for monetary return on investment which is tangible.

When it comes to time, what is the return we expect and how do we measure it? If we didn't know the answer to this question how could we identify those activities not to do?

This is an important point. The return that we expect from our time depends on HOW we want to spend our time as well as WHAT we want to achieve. May be we want to make money and / or may be we want to devote our time towards social causes. Note that we may have a HOW as an objective as well.

Once we have identified our personal objective we will use that to decide how we spend our time. At the very least, the awareness of personal objective will help us to decide which activities we need not do. Adherence to this point helps us to maximize the return on investment of our time. And this is what separates the two groups of people which I mentioned in the beginning - those that are constantly short of time and those that constantly seem to be on top of things.

The takeaway from this is: Identify what you need NOT do. And scrupulously dont do it. It is perfectly fine, optimal for us to not do some or many things in our lives. A silly fellow is he who puts his money in every scheme that he comes across.

If you still feel that money and time are entirely different and that the same yardstick should not be applied to the two, look around and see for yourself whether the people around you who are usually on top of things do all the activities that confront them with equal vigor...

Man's Behavior

What kind of person achieves what he wants? What kind of person becomes a tyrant? Who becomes a thief? Why do we become god fearing?

I used to think about these questions quite frequently. I come from a fairly orthodox family where everyone prays before important events such as exams or while taking up a new job etc. And I was, from my early teens, not into it. People around me were different and I was different in this respect.

Much later I got around to thinking what caused us to become this way. A friend of mine once sent me a ppt (embedded in one of those chain mails) in which it was claimed that what we need most in life was faith. And this faith is usually held to be an exalted virtue in people.

I think there are 4 different aspects in a man's character.

1. A desire: Most people have various kinds of desires be it money, objects, status, achievement. There are some people who dont have much of an ambition or desire - a "sanyasi" of these days.

2. A fire in the belly: This makes a man strive to achieve his desire. And makes him desperate to get it. Without this fire in the belly, the desire only remain a dream.

3. An ability to achieve what he desires: This happens through appropriate planning and adequate effort. People having this would know when to cut the losses, how to circumvent seemingly unsurmountable obstacles and temper their desires.

When this ability to plan, execute with relentless motivation is absent what is left in a person is only a burning desire but no conspicuous ability to achieve. Such people invariably turn into thieves or turn to religion. They believe that a faith in god (and a trip to Tirupati or Mecca or Jerusalem) will get them what they want (a good education for the son or a good groom for the daughter or a good job for self etc). Its so easy and comforting to believe that breaking 108 coconuts or wearing a new gem stone will get them what they badly desire but which they have hitherto not been fortunate to get.

4. Wisdom and strength of character: This is needed to know what boundaries not to cross which moral / ethical rules not to violate. A person without this wisdom / strength of character would turn out to be a person who achieves what he wants without regard to ethics and morals, such as a Hitler.

I believe, people having all these attributes will achieve their desires and be happier. An algebraically positive difference between a man's desire and his ability to achieve makes him unhappy, evil and turns him towards god. Have we wondered why a man goes to a temple? Is it for world peace? Most of us go to a temple because we have not got what we wanted through our own abilities. Are we born to be strong, to believe in ourselves and put in the effort and achieve it or are we born to lead an impotent life, depending on the grace of god?

If we look at the people around us, we can categorize them as having only the 1st attribute or only the 1st two or the 1st three or as having attributes. Reflect for a second and see whether we can categorize people whom we know. And see whether you admire the people who have a positive difference in desire and ability or those with a negative or zero difference... Does that tell us something?

To come back to the ppt which claimed that faith is the most important aspect in a man, how would we classify such a man? A level 1 person? Or a level 2/3/4? What is faith without ability? Yuck...