SWAY

There is a connection between the books ‘Switch’ and ‘Sway’ in a certain way. We sometimes take irrational decisions owing to our elephant or not keeping in balance.

            Sway might be explained through the hatred for losing, love, ambition, commitment but sometimes there is no other choice or we just can’t find it as in the story;

            A son comes to his father and says ‘Father, a camel is 100 golds. Can we buy one?’ Father says ‘later’. Son keeps coming to his father every day and saying ‘Father, a camel is now 75 golds, 50, 25 etc golds. Can we buy one?’ But father also keeps saying ‘later’. Eventually a camel is one gold and the answer is the same. But some time later son comes to his father with disappointment in his face and heart and says ‘Father, a camel is now 200 golds.’ Father says ‘go and buy two of them, my son.’ Son is surprised and asks ‘when a camel was 1 gold we didn’t buy. It’s 200 golds now and you ask me to go and buy two. What is the logic here, father?’ Father explains ‘when a camel was a gold we didn’t have enough money even for food. But now we have a lot. That’s the logic.’

            By the way, who decides what is rational, what is not? Who sees everything from inside and outside? More to the point, who sees the future? Once the most clever people said the Earth was flat. Now even a small child knows at least it is not. To be flexible, modest, open minded, to share information and to ask people’s ideas but at the same time to keep searching and to be your own self might be the most rational idea.

            Just a note: the writer’s own sway about Darwinism might be bigger than any other one he mentions in his book.

by Ibrahim Can Korkut