Response: One of the Curses of London

Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Jed.
Categories: Philosophy & Spirituality.

Regarding your article posted on VM:  I think it is very pertinent to our post-business school world where we’re encouraged to develop as expansive a network as possible.  The more widespread adoption of this way of interacting naturally results in more relevant but less meaningful relationships being developed today.  It is easy to see that as the world becomes increasingly globalized and people begin to move from city to city more frequently, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain close relationships, increasing the importance of social networking sites.  Yet many “relevant-only” relationships can be very symbiotic (i.e. for introductions, idea exchange, or a party buddy) and countervailing the negative effects of the reduced closeness we could see an increase in the importance of social graces (i.e. more effort, conciously and/or unconciously, to be polite and helpful to others) as the dialectical praxis (stole that one from an article I share with you below) would be to avoid being replaced at all costs.  Only the foolish and/or indifferent would risk replacement by being rude or playing games.  On the other hand, one might argue, how would we know that the person is being “real” or not?  

I do indeed see the tragedy in losing touch with close friends because I personally cannot imagine life without the few individuals I have known for years and with whom I am able to be completely comfortable and thus have an extra degree (often several extra degrees) of closeness.  I think close friendships can still be maintained with distance, it just takes more of an effort.  Perhaps I am a case to cite:  I moved 6 times before age 14 because my father was a doctor in the Navy, and as a result had to really work hard to keep in touch with old friends and visit as much as possible.  I still keep in touch with 3 guys in the Bay Area I went to elementary/middle school with because I went out there every summer in high school after moving away and gave them calls from time to time.  With the advent of email, communication was made even easier.  I chat with one, who now lives in NYC with his wife and does private equity, probably once or twice a week now.  Even though we didn’t go to HS or college together, the friendship made years ago could still relatively easily be maintained.  He is the guy who flew in for one night of my bachelor party because he couldn’t make the whole weekend due to a trip to the middle east.  So, well over eight years of not being in physical contact was bridged easily because of phone and email (and likely encouraged because of the similarities in our respective educational backgrounds and career paths).  Curious to know whether there is a difference in the ability to do this sort of thing depending on gender (i.e. do women need to be in close proximity physically to maintain a relationship with a friend).    

Another good friend of mine ranks most people in his network based on how much potential value they add to his life.  Only a few of his long-time friends (myself included) seem to be valued above and beyond this direct measure.  I think a lot of people think this way and I think I can name more than a dozen I’ve met at Wharton.  The more subtle qualities of the person are thus minimized in importance while the directly quantifiable, curriculum-vitae qualities are emphasized in importance.  I heard him once say something along the lines of, “the only real measure of the intelligence of a person is their personal wealth.”  This shocked me because of its apallingly bourgeois ignorance of just about everything beautiful in the world but also got me thinking how could such a person (who is extremely intelligent in many ways) could think so blindly and dehumanizingly capitalistically.  What’s frightening this and about your insight in the VM posting is that it hints at the potential commoditization of human relationships.  The idea seems to loom large with derivative implications.  Check out this paper - the whole paper reads well - but I think the section “Social Exchange and Value Formation” and “The Methodological Commodification of the Subject: Psychological Abstractions” are particularly relevant to some of the many implications.

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