breaking the rule

it's been a while since i've written in prose, but that does not mean i have not mused and pondered upon various ideas that merit mention here. it is unfortunate, however, that i have not had the alacrity or opportunity to touch upon them, but today i think i will gander a small entry on relationships, if only because a lot of my peers have been writing on it recently.

it is nothing new, the gaming of relationships, or at least that of courtship. i have many friends who have been on the offence with such theories and postulations, just as much as i have friends who have fallen (unwittingly) victims to them. i will not pretend that i am not tempted to engage in the manipulation of the opposite sex's psyche. who cannot attest to being madly in love with another, that he or she would not do anything to tip the odds in his/her favour? who cannot say that a meandering eye, mind, or heart has not warranted attention enough to urge the body into actions it cannot commit to? the tongues that lie, the hands that cheat, the eyes that wander more than feet? if they are not in all in the name of love, then they are in name of lust, but who can judge more than onesself? i digress.

the point here is that some people will argue that gaming any system is all part of the greater scheme - winning. and what ends will people not take to win such hefty stakes? i have given in to the ideology that i should not, for personally, the ethics of such things are like using cheat codes in videogames, or at the very least using a walkthrough. puritans will cry, and pragmatics will laugh, idealists will find a way to incorporate said gaming into the system, and the few who couldn't care less will inevitably settle for what they can afford.

which brings upon the next idea - that of affording. courtship in nature has evolved to become as complex as the species (and in the case of humans, sometimes even moreso than we are). it is easy, and fun, and exciting to study simple genetic elements at 'courtship' - the concepts are very reliable and reproducible in nature. from jumping genes to viruses to allelic variations of the most housekeeping of genes, only the essential survive to propagate, and there is no room for metabolic burden, and excess of non-coding. i apologise for the throwing around of jargon, but the phrases are less meaningful than the idea that 'in with the good, out with the bad'. good and bad are easily defined depending on the needs of the host at the time, and there are little, if any issues of selecting the better suitor (if such terms can be used for genes and the such, i suppose).

then come the simple organisms, and we slowly move up the 'complexity' hierarchy, and the simplicity of our earlier argument slowly and steadily falls apart. the definition of good and bad, better and worse, becomes blurred, and at best, arbitrary. illustrations become grey areas and anecdotes become case studies, and for fear of the worse, i can only generalise that there is no longer a rule when it comes to men.

returning to gaming the system - the attempt to put rules upon courtship and romance, and manipulating the rules to our favours. many people attest to its success and if only by virtue of empirical result, i have to incline to believe in it. but choice. the responsibility that comes with yielding such power is only comparable to that of spiderman. and to extend the analogy, who would choose to become such a superhuman - apparently all of us. but what we do not realise and do not fulfil the responsibility that comes with it, which unfortunately leads to its abuse. with time, the status quo is changed - mangled beyond recognition and distorted far beyond belief. that verily leaves us with? nothing more than a false sense of attractions, a superficial world of courtships, a design doomed from conception except in the paltry of most fortunate cases.

who is to blame? what is to blame? besides our evolutionary imperative to pair with the 'most eligible bachelor(ette)'? i cannot fathom an explanation even close enough to a truth. and for my experience (or very much lack thereof), i can only comfort myself that though i will never live to become the epitome of such (or any) yardstick regarding romance or attraction or related genres and sub-genres, i will have gamed the system by not even trying to play.

p/s: and if that removes any entitlement to ethical behaviour that may have come with choice, since it is more apathy than the ability to do great things and declining, i reckon that at least i am not a hypocrite - that which i hate the most.