Friendship Transactions
Some recent interactions have led to me an interesting realizations about my relationships with people, and relationships in general. These thoughts have been so interesting that I find myself suddenly wide awake, when a couple hours ago, I was collapsing on my bed with my lights on. So I figure if I can’t sleep, well I may as well write em down.
There’s an important type of transaction that occurs within a friendship that I want to isolate and think about, but before I do that, I want to think about the typical case of what a transaction is. The most concrete example of transaction I can think of involves money. Let’s say I got money, and you don’t, and we’re friends. Now, you need the money and know that you’ll be able to pay me back, and I have it just sitting around in my bank account anyway, so I decide that, using my trust in your decency as collateral, I’ll give you that money. There are three points I want to make about this transaction. 1) It involves a attribute which can be transfered from one person to another. 2) In order to make the transaction, I need to have some reason that makes me think that I’m going to benefit from this transaction. Ie I need some sort of collateral. 3) This isn’t charity we’re talking about, so I expect my money back. Charity is another kind of transaction entirely; it’s more like a purchase than a loan.
Now, friendships can involve all sorts of transactions, not just monetary ones. The essence of friendship I think involves a very specific type of transaction, and it’s that transaction that makes a friendship meaningful and worth our time. On this, my thought is that friendships are founded on the notion of shared values. In order for us to value each other, we must have some sort of common ground in terms of what we think is valuable. I think it’s pretty much impossible to base a friendship on the fact that I find something great about you that you abhor. You gotta be able to see it as well. This brings me to my second point about friendships. Once a set of shared values have been established, the basic transaction performed in a friendship is that of appreciation.
What does it mean for me to appreciate some aspect of your person? It means, not only that we have a common set of values, but that I recognize some value in you and I let you know about it. It would be pretty useless to you if I thought really highly of you and never made that fact known to you. What serves as a value to you is that you recognize the fact that I recognize value in you, and that you trust my ability to judge this type of thing. When I share some moral dilemma with a friend of mine, I get some value from a second opinion on the matter, but the main value comes from the fact that I respect your opinion and you respect my ability to think about these things. You can physically experience these facts just by feeling the joy that comes from such a conversation.
So, my thesis is that the primary value of a friendship comes from the transaction of mutual appreciation. I don’t need to appreciate you as much as you appreciate me in order for a friendship to be valuable, but some sort of mutual appreciation needs to be going on in order for a friendship to have value. People who don’t respect each other (or themselves) can’t have healthy friendships. Thing is, in recognizing this basic sort of spiritual transaction, I’ve come to realize that there’s another sort that occurs akin the loan example from earlier.
Self esteem is tricky. It provides the fuel for a friendship, since my ability to appreciate the great things about myself enable me to understand what you’re giving me and why your appreciation is actually justified (and real). Often times though, people’s worst vices come from a distinct lack of self esteem in a certain area. I know this cause I see it often. It’s something that has always fascinated me. Another thing I realized is that in comparison to the general public, I have a ton of self esteem. Certainly there are areas in which I’m unconfident, but they’re very isolated. My general impression of myself and my ability to live in this world is very high. I set enormously high standards for myself because I think I can achieve them. And I think about my expectations and my ability constantly. The people I find myself in friendships with aren’t always as confident in themselves.
I’ve never noticed or realized this before, but what I’ve come to realize is that I’ve made a deal with people at times. And its caused a lot of the problems I’ve run into with people. The transaction isn’t entirely unreasonable, but you gotta be careful about it. The thing is that sometimes, a person’s self esteem is being held down by psychological issues. For reasons that are very complicated, a person can’t see the good things about themselves. The assumption here of course is that they have virtues, and that you can see them, but they can’t. Because of this situation, you can’t really have a perfect friendship, because the other person won’t entirely be able to understand why your appreciation in them is justified. However, if you want, you can choose to give them that appreciation anyway. And when you do this, the kind of transaction you perform is a spiritual loan.
Loaned appreciation is an odd phenomenon, and really, I’ve never thought about it precisely until tonight. The justification for the loan comes from the fact that I can see something about you that you can’t, for whatever reason. Oddly, I find that in order to perform this sort of transaction, it requires a greater amount of confidence than a usual friendship. I think this might be because what I’m literally doing is taking some of my confidence and giving it to you outright. I’m solely taking a risk on my ability to judge people and passing a judgment that you can’t make for yourself. That takes a great deal of trust in your understanding of another person and in your ability to judge people. The question in my mind is at this point how a person pays you back for this loan.
I think the collateral on this type of loan is similar to the money example; it’s just my trust in your ability to overcome your problems. I’ll get back what I gave you when you finally are able to see for yourself what I can see in you. At that point, I needed share my confidence with you at all, it should be readily apparent to both of us that you are what I thought you were capable of. It’s incredible really, if a person is able to accomplish this sort of repayment, because its not easy. Confidence is our basic fuel in life, and without it, it can be very difficult to make significant accomplishments. What’s even more difficult is to fix our self esteem, since society doesn’t often like talking about this sort of thing. I think people tend to regard confidence as something you either have or lack...not as something you build over time. Cause I mean, if confidence is something you build, then tell me: how do you build it? What steps do you take toward building it? I don’t think the unearned praise of your friendships will build your confidence in any real way. That’s just borrowed confidence, and eventually you gotta pay it back. The actual steps a person must take toward building up their self esteem are very mysterious precisely because most people don’t have a clue how these things work.
I’ve noticed something though through my experiences. While sometimes people are able to fix themselves, and genuinely acquire the confidence I lent to them for a time, a lot of people simply aren’t able to. The situation that develops is actually pretty destructive to me. It’s equivalent to the situation in which a person constantly asks a friend of theirs for money, but never repays it. I’ll let you ponder over the probable outcomes in these sorts of situations though, because now I’m feeling tired. Maybe I’ll write more about this stuff in a later entry, when I’ve thought about it more. For now, bed.
There’s an important type of transaction that occurs within a friendship that I want to isolate and think about, but before I do that, I want to think about the typical case of what a transaction is. The most concrete example of transaction I can think of involves money. Let’s say I got money, and you don’t, and we’re friends. Now, you need the money and know that you’ll be able to pay me back, and I have it just sitting around in my bank account anyway, so I decide that, using my trust in your decency as collateral, I’ll give you that money. There are three points I want to make about this transaction. 1) It involves a attribute which can be transfered from one person to another. 2) In order to make the transaction, I need to have some reason that makes me think that I’m going to benefit from this transaction. Ie I need some sort of collateral. 3) This isn’t charity we’re talking about, so I expect my money back. Charity is another kind of transaction entirely; it’s more like a purchase than a loan.
Now, friendships can involve all sorts of transactions, not just monetary ones. The essence of friendship I think involves a very specific type of transaction, and it’s that transaction that makes a friendship meaningful and worth our time. On this, my thought is that friendships are founded on the notion of shared values. In order for us to value each other, we must have some sort of common ground in terms of what we think is valuable. I think it’s pretty much impossible to base a friendship on the fact that I find something great about you that you abhor. You gotta be able to see it as well. This brings me to my second point about friendships. Once a set of shared values have been established, the basic transaction performed in a friendship is that of appreciation.
What does it mean for me to appreciate some aspect of your person? It means, not only that we have a common set of values, but that I recognize some value in you and I let you know about it. It would be pretty useless to you if I thought really highly of you and never made that fact known to you. What serves as a value to you is that you recognize the fact that I recognize value in you, and that you trust my ability to judge this type of thing. When I share some moral dilemma with a friend of mine, I get some value from a second opinion on the matter, but the main value comes from the fact that I respect your opinion and you respect my ability to think about these things. You can physically experience these facts just by feeling the joy that comes from such a conversation.
So, my thesis is that the primary value of a friendship comes from the transaction of mutual appreciation. I don’t need to appreciate you as much as you appreciate me in order for a friendship to be valuable, but some sort of mutual appreciation needs to be going on in order for a friendship to have value. People who don’t respect each other (or themselves) can’t have healthy friendships. Thing is, in recognizing this basic sort of spiritual transaction, I’ve come to realize that there’s another sort that occurs akin the loan example from earlier.
Self esteem is tricky. It provides the fuel for a friendship, since my ability to appreciate the great things about myself enable me to understand what you’re giving me and why your appreciation is actually justified (and real). Often times though, people’s worst vices come from a distinct lack of self esteem in a certain area. I know this cause I see it often. It’s something that has always fascinated me. Another thing I realized is that in comparison to the general public, I have a ton of self esteem. Certainly there are areas in which I’m unconfident, but they’re very isolated. My general impression of myself and my ability to live in this world is very high. I set enormously high standards for myself because I think I can achieve them. And I think about my expectations and my ability constantly. The people I find myself in friendships with aren’t always as confident in themselves.
I’ve never noticed or realized this before, but what I’ve come to realize is that I’ve made a deal with people at times. And its caused a lot of the problems I’ve run into with people. The transaction isn’t entirely unreasonable, but you gotta be careful about it. The thing is that sometimes, a person’s self esteem is being held down by psychological issues. For reasons that are very complicated, a person can’t see the good things about themselves. The assumption here of course is that they have virtues, and that you can see them, but they can’t. Because of this situation, you can’t really have a perfect friendship, because the other person won’t entirely be able to understand why your appreciation in them is justified. However, if you want, you can choose to give them that appreciation anyway. And when you do this, the kind of transaction you perform is a spiritual loan.
Loaned appreciation is an odd phenomenon, and really, I’ve never thought about it precisely until tonight. The justification for the loan comes from the fact that I can see something about you that you can’t, for whatever reason. Oddly, I find that in order to perform this sort of transaction, it requires a greater amount of confidence than a usual friendship. I think this might be because what I’m literally doing is taking some of my confidence and giving it to you outright. I’m solely taking a risk on my ability to judge people and passing a judgment that you can’t make for yourself. That takes a great deal of trust in your understanding of another person and in your ability to judge people. The question in my mind is at this point how a person pays you back for this loan.
I think the collateral on this type of loan is similar to the money example; it’s just my trust in your ability to overcome your problems. I’ll get back what I gave you when you finally are able to see for yourself what I can see in you. At that point, I needed share my confidence with you at all, it should be readily apparent to both of us that you are what I thought you were capable of. It’s incredible really, if a person is able to accomplish this sort of repayment, because its not easy. Confidence is our basic fuel in life, and without it, it can be very difficult to make significant accomplishments. What’s even more difficult is to fix our self esteem, since society doesn’t often like talking about this sort of thing. I think people tend to regard confidence as something you either have or lack...not as something you build over time. Cause I mean, if confidence is something you build, then tell me: how do you build it? What steps do you take toward building it? I don’t think the unearned praise of your friendships will build your confidence in any real way. That’s just borrowed confidence, and eventually you gotta pay it back. The actual steps a person must take toward building up their self esteem are very mysterious precisely because most people don’t have a clue how these things work.
I’ve noticed something though through my experiences. While sometimes people are able to fix themselves, and genuinely acquire the confidence I lent to them for a time, a lot of people simply aren’t able to. The situation that develops is actually pretty destructive to me. It’s equivalent to the situation in which a person constantly asks a friend of theirs for money, but never repays it. I’ll let you ponder over the probable outcomes in these sorts of situations though, because now I’m feeling tired. Maybe I’ll write more about this stuff in a later entry, when I’ve thought about it more. For now, bed.