Stupid is as stupid does; or, Objective is subjective - I

What exactly is stupidity? Is it the tendency to act in a way that betrays a lack of good sense / judgment? But if that's the case, then isn't it all entirely subjective? After all, the person whom we think is acting stupidly is doing whatever he is doing because, to him, his judgment is pretty sound, just as we think our judgment is sound.

Expanding on this theme, is there anything that we could talk about in absolute terms? Even God? I'm afraid there isn't, because for each thing we think is absolute, there's a likelihood that to somebody else, it's not so; it's also likely that to that person, there's something else that's an absolute. At the risk of oversimplifying it, I'd like to state that reality, truly, is purely subjective; objective reality just does not exist. We create the reality we live in, otherwise why would Osama bin Laden have supporters? Sometimes, though, we choose to alter our view of reality (or are made to shift our viewpoint), and thereby experience "paradigm shifts".

The dynamics of human relationships

It's strange how easily I get put off by the behaviour of some people, especially when I'm quite tolerant of the same or similar behaviour by some other people. Guess I am not as impartial as I want to be. Maybe you'd think of it as sick. Take your pick, it doesn't affect me as much as you think it would, or perhaps should! ;-)

For example, I have some friends who call / mail me rarely. Let's categorise these, for the sake of convenience, under "A". I also have my share of friends who keep in touch quite regularly. Let's categorise these, for the sake of convenience again, under "B". Now, I'm not generally annoyed with my "A" friends as long as they don't tell me things like "hey, why don't you call me often?"; once they say that, I get really upset because I am the kind of guy who usually reciprocates people's love many times over, and I feel hurt that they're trying to place the responsibility for non-contact / rare contact entirely on my shoulders. Come on, it's not like I stopped you from mailing / calling me!

Anyway, I digress. The thing is, much as I'm not irritated by the category A friends, I get put off that much more easily by the category B friends if they stop calling / mailing me with no explanation whatsoever. I've had such category B friends who haven't a. returned calls, b. replied to mail, but who complain loudly when I fail to do the same occasionally. Man, I get really pissed off when they do that. But being a person who usually avoids confrontations (unless pushed to the extreme), I laugh it off or let it pass without comment. But until such absences are properly explained, I usually go crazy (when I think about those instances) trying to figure out why they did that to me: it's like a splinter in my mind which will leave me peaceful only when it's gone.

Now, the really interesting thing is, even among the category B friends, I have a few whose unannounced absences don't bother me much. I haven't been able to figure out why that's so, short of coming to the rather unpleasant conclusion that I'm biased towards some :-( To paraphrase George Orwell, "All friends will be treated equally, but some will be treated more equally than others" !!

Just to make a few things clear: I'm not the categorising kind of person all the time, but I do like to sort things out once in a while, if only to know where I stand. I don't believe that the measure of a friend's love for you is the number of emails / calls you receive from him / her, but I do feel like I should constantly stay in touch with my friends because they mean so much to me.

Have you felt this way towards your friends? Do you treat all your friends the same way? Or is this madness peculiar to me?