Radhakrishnan A N

Senior Research Fellow

Department of Electron Microscopy

Friendship in a Materialistic World

(Dedicated to all my friends who stick
around me in my bad times)
True, loyal and faithful friends are
indeed our prized possession supposed to be
treasured forever. Their friendship is
timeless and eternal. Aristotle says, For
without friends, no one would choose to
live, though he had all other goods. Good
friends are two bodies with one soul.
Regrettably
and
ironically,
genuine
friendship is hard to be found in our
materialistic world where money and
personal gains are considered as yardsticks
or criteria for having friends. All the folk
tales, stories, great orations praising the
virtues and setting great standards of
friendship seem to have lost their core
meaning in our present age. The ideal
friendship has been confined to books only.
Its significance is reduced to nothingness in
our jet-set age, where moral values are
blurred and eclipsed by greed, selfishness,
faithlessness and some other social evils and
vices.
There was a time when it was
unimaginable for a friend to cheat his friend.
Cheating friends amounted to infidelity. The

spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of friend

was a common worthwhile quality. They
were gelled together in adversity. They were
always mindful of each others interests and
give each other room to grow. Jealousy,
envy, prejudice, hatred, greed, hypocrisy
were foreign to them. They were all-weather
friends, treating their friendship as
something great, noble and holy. It is indeed
very painful to say that such an ideal
friendship is rare in our present era. Genuine
friendship has been adversely affected by
our irrational and inordinate desire of selfimportance, setting aside all the basic moral
values and ethics. All this creates depressing
and pessimistic outlook and one wonders
whether he will ever be able to have good
friends in this materialistic world. The
answer is a big Yes. One must hope for
the better. Pessimism must be replaced by
optimism. Despite the fact that materialism
reigns supreme in our times, loyal and
devoted friends can still be found provided
we make concerted efforts to locate them
and encourage them to come out and let
people know true friendship still exists,
although it lays hidden by being eclipsed by
negative elements of our society. We are all
supposed to make sincere effort to keep
friendship alive for our own sake.
Remember, Friends have no substitute, no
match, not even money, nothing whatsoever.
Finding a loyal friend who will stick
around for the good and bad times is not an
easy task. You should have the intelligence
to understand the people whom you are in
touch with. It is very necessary to identify
the basic character as well as their intentions
before making them your intimate friends.
When choosing best friends, keep in mind

that it takes a long time to grow an intimate

friendship. Loyalty and respect are the two
most important elements for friendships to
thrive. Don't be fooled by first impressions
when making new friends. Ironically, nice
people are often not good people and good
people are often not nice people. Some
people may have some rough edges, and
may even be jerks, but they are generous
and trustworthy - these are good people and
can make them good friends. You should
have the wisdom to differentiate between
true friends and acquaintances. An
acquaintance is a person whom you know
whereas a friend is a person whom you like
and trust. Richard Bach, an American writer,
once said, Your friends will know you
better in the first minute you meet than your
acquaintances will know you in a thousand
years. It is up to you to decide whom to
accept as your friend and whom to keep just
as your acquaintances.
There is a special category of people,
growing day by day in number, which is
really a threat to true friendship and
relations. They are the product of our
competitive, materialistic world and we can
simply call them Manipulators. As the
name suggests, these people utilizes
relationships for their personal gain and they
have no hesitation to cheat us. There are in
fact two types of manipulators: active
manipulators and passive manipulators.
Active manipulators are usually people with
superiority complex and always try to
command other people. They manipulate
relations in such a way that even if we are
aware of their intentions, they make us
obliged to them in some way and we may
not be able to deny them. They create such a

feeling of inferiority or fear in you that you

cannot exist without them. They may help
you in some critical situations, but may take
the advantage of the same after some time.
They may praise you in public, but may try
to impose their own ideas and thoughts into
your mind. Fortunately, it is quite easy to
identify active manipulators as their
strategies and methods of manipulation are
more or less straight forward. You have to
keep such people at a distance as they can
intoxicate your character and moral values.
Passive manipulators are best
described as wolves in sheeps clothing.
These people come to you in sheeps
clothing, but inside, they are cunning
wolves. At first you might feel that they are
the best people you have ever met and you
could make them your sincere friend.
Another interesting fact is that they always
try to keep a good image in the society and
behave as if they have invented the morality
and all the virtues. Nobody will believe you
if you tell somebody about their true nature
and that is the reason, more people fall into
their magic spell. You realize their true
character only after you are cheated. They
utilize relations for their personal gain as
long as they feel that the friendship doesnt
give them any burden. They stand with you
only in your good times and go away from
you when you really need a help. They are
really a great threat to genuine relationships
than active manipulators as their strategies
and policies are hidden. It is very difficult to
identify them if you are thinking only
positively. Once you identify such people,
keep them away from your life, because they
can only bring defame and misfortunes to
you.

Understanding the true character of

the manipulative people is the first step in
effectively dealing with them. There are
certain general behaviors exhibited by these
people which may help you to identify and
understand them.

Lie by withholding a significant

amount of truth
Refuse to admit the fact that they
have done something wrong
Show selective inattention or
selective attention
Use charm, praise and flattery
Dont give you straight answers
Pretend either innocence or anger
Use unexpected sarcastic comments
Advise or sympathize with you,
but never extend a helping hand

In general, we can expect them to do

whatever that helps them to fetch their
things in a silent and hidden way that others
cannot easily spot out. They wanted to
achieve their goals without losing their
pseudo social status. These are all products
of the modern world which adopted a useand-throw culture. You should become a
better judge of character, identify your own
weaknesses and should not let others
manipulate you.
Of course, its not always a good
idea to judge friends in a detached way, or to
doubt a friendship just because you cant
easily identify its rewards. Friendships make
up a huge chunk of our support system.
They are the glue that holds it all together. If
one friendship disappears, a hole is left in
the support web. But sometimes in life, it is

necessary to let go of people that no longer

serve as a support, but instead lead us to
stress and problematic situations. It is great
to forgive and forget, but there are times
when a betrayal is too great for you to
continue with a friendship. If a friendship
has constantly caused you resentment and
you are being used or never being shown a
return to your giving in the relationship, it is
most likely to be unhealthy and should be
ended. Good friends are like diamonds; very
precious and will illuminate your life. But
you have to dig deep and remove a lot of
mud to find out the diamond. Keep only
diamonds with you.
Tailpiece: Friendship is more valuable than
a research publication or even a Ph.D.