Re: Deals

["Laura J. Mixon" <ljm@digitalnoir.com>]

Deals go right to the heart of life.  From the moment a baby is born, it is
trying to get its needs met, trying to exert an influence on its
environment.  And human babies are probably the most helpless animal there
is, at birth.  The only way they can get their needs met is to strike up a
bargain with mom:  you meet my physical and emotional needs, and I'll be
nearly unbearably cute, loving, and attentive to you.

At this early age, this deal is hard-wired; the baby's responses (crying,
gurgling, and looking adorable) are all strictly genetic, and directly wired
to its needs --  but very quickly, deal-making, whether conscious or
unconscious, enters into the picture.

Baby cries, mom picks her up and coos to soothe her, offering food, clean
diapers, movement, burpings, till the baby's need is met; the baby figures
out that when she is miserable and scared and expresses that as a raw
feelings, mom responds.  Over time on a conscious level, the baby is
learning that she can exert influence; her feelings and needs matter to
someone.

On an unconscious level, he gains trust in the basic nature of the universe.
Somebody cares.  It's at the foundation of that baby's sense of his own
humanity -- the conflict between our own desires for mastery and satiation
and attention/power; and the need to appease and satiate and attend to the
needs of others.

And this dynamic doesn't stop there.  Rearing a child is all about figuring
out their agenda (personal desires and needs) and teaching them about
others'.  It's a constant negotiation, or a power struggle, or even a war --
which you could say is a deal gone bad, or a situation in which the parties
can't reach agreement on what's on the table or their wants/needs are so at
odds they'll never reach agreement (a tragedy usually has this element).

At the heart of nearly every story you will find, not of necessity the sort
of mechanical horse-trading of the cognitive level stuff, but definitely
this deep-level dealmaking and its basic building blocks:  fear of betrayal,
trust, and desire.  I'm tempted to go so far as to say all stories have this
element, but I want to test my hypothesis with several different kinds of
stories before making that strong a statement.

(There can be deals with Fate, btw, not just deals with other humans.)  ("If
you let me live through this, God, I promise I'll never snatch another purse
for the rest of my life...")




-l.