In addition to what you have said here, you cannot save up your time. It’s questionable if you can save up your pats on the back (which you might just as well give away very liberally, and your reward could be as simple as the meaning or help it created for someone else). Perhaps you can save your attention, but usually that is going to be between you and your work and internet/media habits more than human interaction habits.
There could be some extreme cases where someone is hogging an undue level of time and attention (and at that point, you need to set boundaries as the issue likely lies within you as much as your friend). Which segues into, I think the whole point OP is missing, “It takes two to tango.” There’s something complex in the interaction between two people. If it was “worthwhile” or “you got something out of it” it is often due to the influence of your own actions, words, reality field as much as anything they willfully “did” or “did not do.” And if it seemed like a waste of time, well, at least 50% of that interaction was you!
Your statement “The things that are given in a friendship are things that when you give them, you still have them. This is unlike buying a loaf of bread, where I am little concerned to support the baker, nor he me.” is correct. To reach a little further into it, likely looking at things transactionally will skew human interactions in a specific direction, self-selecting for other people and interactions of a certain type. Strangely, for the person who believes in transactional human interactions, I suspect due to that skewing, looking back it will appear that their perspective was “correct.” Transactionalism being a kind of self-reinforcing or even self-feeding pattern.
I think this might be akin to the conversational results that would be achieved in social interactions between a habit of steelmanning vs strawmanning. In steelmanning, you would understand things better, but also in my experience you can draw out the best of the other person’s thinking, intentions, etc. The entire interaction typically changes. Especially if you are talking to someone from an otherwise embattled group. Often they drop the whole thing after awhile and you’re talking to another human with about the same needs, wants, and motives as any other decent person, and there’s something to connect to.
As you said, paying of attention and pats on the back in a transactional way seems dysfunctional. But it’s also selective for partners who themselves are either very transactive or very giving. It’s likely someone could leave ten years of doing it that way thinking they were “right.” And if all you care about is one level of tangible results, it might be “an effective strategy.” It’s only a partial analogy, but just like the ideologue who goes around looking for every hole and inconsistency in dissenting views (the highbrow version of strawmanning) will have been “right” about all those idiots out there.
In addition to what you have said here, you cannot save up your time. It’s questionable if you can save up your pats on the back (which you might just as well give away very liberally, and your reward could be as simple as the meaning or help it created for someone else). Perhaps you can save your attention, but usually that is going to be between you and your work and internet/media habits more than human interaction habits.
There could be some extreme cases where someone is hogging an undue level of time and attention (and at that point, you need to set boundaries as the issue likely lies within you as much as your friend). Which segues into, I think the whole point OP is missing, “It takes two to tango.” There’s something complex in the interaction between two people. If it was “worthwhile” or “you got something out of it” it is often due to the influence of your own actions, words, reality field as much as anything they willfully “did” or “did not do.” And if it seemed like a waste of time, well, at least 50% of that interaction was you!
Your statement “The things that are given in a friendship are things that when you give them, you still have them. This is unlike buying a loaf of bread, where I am little concerned to support the baker, nor he me.” is correct. To reach a little further into it, likely looking at things transactionally will skew human interactions in a specific direction, self-selecting for other people and interactions of a certain type. Strangely, for the person who believes in transactional human interactions, I suspect due to that skewing, looking back it will appear that their perspective was “correct.” Transactionalism being a kind of self-reinforcing or even self-feeding pattern.
I think this might be akin to the conversational results that would be achieved in social interactions between a habit of steelmanning vs strawmanning. In steelmanning, you would understand things better, but also in my experience you can draw out the best of the other person’s thinking, intentions, etc. The entire interaction typically changes. Especially if you are talking to someone from an otherwise embattled group. Often they drop the whole thing after awhile and you’re talking to another human with about the same needs, wants, and motives as any other decent person, and there’s something to connect to.
As you said, paying of attention and pats on the back in a transactional way seems dysfunctional. But it’s also selective for partners who themselves are either very transactive or very giving. It’s likely someone could leave ten years of doing it that way thinking they were “right.” And if all you care about is one level of tangible results, it might be “an effective strategy.” It’s only a partial analogy, but just like the ideologue who goes around looking for every hole and inconsistency in dissenting views (the highbrow version of strawmanning) will have been “right” about all those idiots out there.