Transcript Of An Unreserved Exchange

Altruism, Bhikku, is mostly the ability to say "Poor Bastard" in times of strife.

- October 2, 489 BC

It was one of those days when one couldn't do anything, because there was just too much to do. I wanted to take a break, but felt too guilty to actually get up and leave. For the tenth time, I looked at my to-do list for the day.

"Want to get a coffee?". I turned. He stood, smiling. We walked to the vending machine. He got his coffee. "I don't know how you drink that stuff, man. It's ditch-water. Anyway, want to walk outside for a bit? It's nice outside. As nice as Dallas is going to get, anyway." "Sure." We stepped out into the blinding Texas sunlight. Near a nook just below the roof, a mockingbird was fighting a starling for nest space. In their strange way, they were charming without being beautiful. Suddenly, I felt light-headed.

"Hey, I meant to ask you this earlier. All this fuss about reservation, what do you think about it?"
He shrugged. "What's there, man? I'm neither rich nor old enough to be a right-winger."
"Not rich enough, sure. But not old enough? Dyooode." He grinned, and nodded his head in reverse--his head tilted upwards slowly and came down even slower. It was his equivalent of eye-rolling. I continued, "No, seriously. What do you think?"
"I haven't thought about it much, man. Obviously, all the players have an agenda. The numbers they are throwing out are all vague and probably cooked up. Plus it's not clear whether reservations at the higest level have worked so far."
"Naa, actually, I don't particularly care for the details. If they haven't worked, maybe we just haven't found how to make them work. I'm more interested in the principle of the thing. Is the idea itself fair?"
He grinned, his eyes twinkling. "There you go again. Do you ever consider details? And you call yourself an engineer."
I smiled. "Fuss with details if you want, mate. I'm headed towards top management. Big picture & vision, c'est moi."
He did his reverse nod again. "Whawdever. But anyway, what's your problem with the idea of reservation?". Quotes in the air while saying idea.
"For one thing, merit and quality will go poof if you put in some arbit constraint like caste or economic status or whatever."
"I could argue that exam scores don't reflect merit, and at any rate, this exam merit is kinda overrated. Look around. A well-trained monkey can do what most of us are doing. But anyway, let's say your exam merit is directly proportional to work quality. Even then, why obsess over merit, and make it some kind of God?"
"But, if you concede that, what else is there? "
"Equality, maybe. Justice, fairness, and all that. I guess we all implicitly agree that we want everyone to be equal. And obviously those guys got screwed."
"Then why not reservation only for schooling. Why reservation in higher education?"
"I'm just guessing here--I'm FC myself--but I'd think that atmosphere has a lot to do with how well we're doing. You and I are riding on a culture of education that goes back centuries. Those guys aren't. Money or high school education won't give that culture. People need to believe they can study and understand complicated things, and for that they need living examples.'
"A right winger would call that half-baked liberal bullshit. That kind of thing will only slow down the entire economy and hurt the BCs too. But anyway, isn't your culture of education stuff vague and intangible? How do you quantify it and make it public policy?"
"Dude, you were the one interested in the principle of the thing. And anyway, all your trickle-down macroeconomics is just as vague as my culture of education."
"Touche'. About the principle of the thing.."
"Just a minute. That's a pretty bird, the blue one. It's a woodpecker 'aan?"
"No, itsa bluejay. Not that many here, but I see quite a few near my house."
"Yaa, your area is nice. Very green. But anyway, you were saying something when I interrupted. Sorry."
"Thatsokay. I was saying, uhhh ...right, I was saying: Let's agree that those guys don't have a culture of education. Basically, my greatgrandfather screwed them over. So why should my son pay the price for that. I mean, given that he got the same education as another guy and scored higher, why should he suffer? What kind of fairness is that?"
"See, I agree it's not a win-win situation. There are only so many resources going around. If you've had an advantage at some point, you have got to take a hit at some point, right? If you really want equality, that is."
"Yaaa, but why would anyone want equality like that? You're talking about some turn the other cheek kind of stuff, right?"
"I don't know, man. Didn't white people kill other white people so that black people won't be slaves any more? And what about Gandhi? He was real, and popular too, in case you forgot."
"Yeah, but those are just bursts of, errr, altruism, right? What about Iraq today, or Darfur, or Afghanistan or Palestine, or Gujarat for that matter?"
"Actually, I like to think that we're slowly becoming more decent. Five centuries back, would there have been the same outcry about Iraq and Darfur here in the US?"
"So you're saying people are becoming more altruistic?"
"If you put it that way, it sounds kinda silly. But what I think is that when something is particularly wrong, some far-left loony makes a big noise about changing it. Initially, it sounds shrill and idiotic. But slowly, change becomes more acceptable and even inevitable. And only then society accepts it."
"Well, loonies make noises about lots of things. How many actually take off, and at any rate, why is now different from 1100 AD?"
"The way I see it, the average receptivity to liberal loonies is increasing. Not constantly, but in bursts. Everytime there's a Jesus or a Gandhi, it's a moral example. And I think that kind of thing has an inherent appeal to it. On the average, of course. There are always people who'll detest it, and there'll always be steps back into some particularly barbaric stuff."
"Well, the way I see it, even if people are more broad-minded today, it's only because they can afford to be. Life is more comfortable now, see?"
"Yeah, but it could well have gone the other way. More comfort could have led to more greed. Survival of the fittest and stuff like that."
"Actually, I meant to bring that up too. Isn't a population of altruists mathematically unstable, Darwinism, etcetra?"
[shrug] "Sure, if everyone else turns the other cheek, the guy who starts slapping will be king. But mostly, this altruism business doesn't take much. It's a question of realizing that some poor bastard needs something more than you do. And when you really think that its' unfair, you'll voluntarily give away stuff but you'll do it carefully, with minimum loss to you and maximum gain to him. But first, you have to concede that some sacrifices need to be made, not wait for Kancha Illiah and Arjun Singh to tell you what those changes are, and push their agenda."

We walked in silence for a while. We had finished our circuit of the building. Somehow, the idea of going back inside made me sad in a childish end-of-summer way. "Want to go one more round?"
"No, babu. Got work to do."
"What work?"
"Making some slides. Presentation to show ___'s architecture will increase complexity by 4x"
"Really?"
He grinned. "Sure. The front-end complexity does"
"Let me guess. The front end's not the really complex part."
"Well. Just remember that you didn't hear that from me".
"What about fairness and justice, comrade?"
"Fairness is all very well, my friend. But ___ is the Evil Empire and I'm fighting a just war."
"All you shady liberal types. Damn."

And we walked back, grinning.

Note 1 : As always, this was meant to be a story, not a statement. I freely admit I know next to nothing about reservations.
Note 2 : Some stories just happen to sound better in first person.