determinism of friends & hobbies
Here in the marina there is a pattern in friendship grouping.
You become friends with people of your own
- age
- language (rather than nationality ; & language is defined as “mutually intelligible speech” — so Swiss German would be considered a different language than German but Swedish would be considered the same language as Norwegian and Norwegian would be considered the same language as Danish but maybe Swedish and Danish would be considered more distant dialects of each other and American English and British English are semi-distant dialects of each other with variations of American dialects as being the smallest increment of “dialect” ; Californians vs southerners vs east coasters)
- proximity of boat
The most unique of these features becomes the most important factor. Say there are only two South Africans in the marina. Then as long as they’ve heard of each other’s existence, they are likely to become friends, even if their boats are a little bit further apart (but not too far as to be prohibitive)
For us, age is the most unique factor because we are the youngest people here. There are only a few ~30 year olds and then a bunch of 60-70 year olds.
There’s me, the 2 norwegians, the 2 Swiss and one Italian/greek guy (with a slightly older but still significantly-younger-than-everyone-else girlfriend who is the same age as Seb)
Of these three sets of crew, guess who I most bonded with?
The Norwegians. Who — is it a coincidence ? — speak the best English.
(The Swiss Germans speak both English AND German but both with a heavy accent and it’s jarring. And you can tell they most prefer speaking Swiss German which i can partially understand and speak but is not my forte)
Plus we used to be literally right next to the Norwegians. And they’re kind of shy so once they found us they stuck to us and were content with this friendship size.
Doesn’t that give you the creeps? That our friendships were so fated and predictable.
It’s like we can mathematically calculate the graph of friendship before it even happens. And I’ve heard that this marina intentionally puts people of the same age and country near each other to foster friendship. It’s wise and it worked because this marina is rated highly for its lively wintering community and so it attracts a lot of boats.
So then if we are in a situation with people who are ALL of our age and language and we are all closely in proximity with each other…??
Then we befriend people who we have the most random contact with within that group, and who have the most similar likes and dislikes as ourselves. People who have the same physiological and emotional responses to the same things as we do.
And this is a result of both genetics (which is like this random mix including mutations) and mere exposure
both of these factors seem fated with genetics being slightly less determined due to the randomness of gene mixture and mutations
And I think here too, with the similarities of likes and dislikes, the most unique likes will bond people together
Like everyone in all of California likes tacos. It’s not unique so it’s not a bonding point really.
(Until you are a Californian abroad and then talking about how much you miss tacos together might be a total bonding point. Cuz you’re desperate for unique similarities and being Californian is unique abroad)
I think if we look at our closest dearest friends we can spot these factors of age, proximity, language and likes
we know what brought us together
And of the friends which we know were brought to us by likes, I think there we can see what our more “unique” likes are
Mine are:
Sailing, writing & philosophy
I think rock climbing, camping, diving & overnight jungle trekking would count too except proximity keeps these activities more distant
And then I think the most unique things about you ever are the things that no one around you relates to. Obviously. But then also not really obviously.
There are things which I think and believe that are different than what everyone around me think and believe. Like they might agree with me but they don’t find these things to hold the same level of importance as I do.
And I might go somewhere and find a whole community or even society of people who believe and think as I do.
So is that quality is still unique?
Yeah it is.
Because beliefs are molded in large part by our environment. The subtle things like weather and negative ions in the air and the obvious things like access to education and cultural knowledge
To think the way I do when the environments I grew up in didn’t encourage these types of thoughts is still unique even if there are people out there who take these thoughts for granted.
That might be the result of random mutations of genes and chance encounters with unique individuals. I feel like, in conclusion, that all is determined except randomness.
How much of life is truly random? To what percent? Does it vary person to person situation to situation? What’s the max randomness of a life? I don’t even know if I believe in free “will” as such (as “conscious will”) but I think I believe in randomness as the only non-deterministic aspect of an otherwise at-least-partially determined system
The most unique thing about me period is my curiosity and mental energy level.
I wonder if H was important to me because he shared a high mental energy level and curiosity with me? But he was highly pragmatic in his thinking and his thoughts would always be applicable and useful to me. It was always a good time to entertain his thoughts because they were so useful.
Whereas I had some friends who were similar in this way but were entertaining thoughts that were not very actionable — as I am doing now — and so it was like we were spaceships flying around, with no destination, flying just to fly, missing each other by just a second but a second is long when you travel at 3000 mph