Why We Keep Choosing the Things That Make Us Uncomfortable

From horror movies to hawkish monetary policy, we keep going back to what unsettles us. Why do we crave the very things that make us squirm?

By Phynix

Phynix is a seasoned journalist who revels in playful, unconventional narration, blending quirky storytelling with measured, precise editing. Her work embodies a dual mastery of creative flair and steadfast rigor.

August 10, 2026 at 3:30 AM IST

Dear Insighter,

There's a peculiar thing about human nature. We pay money to watch things that terrify us. We order food that makes our eyes water. We read dystopian novels that leave us nauseous about the future. And then we do it all over again.

Is something wrong with us? Or something right?

Horror movies offer a clue. The creeping dread, the jolt, the nervous laughter afterward—there's a word for this: "benign masochism." We seek technically unpleasant experiences because we know we're safe. The monster isn't real. The king chilli's burn will fade.

It's likely the same impulse that makes us reread George Orwell’s 1984, even though we know exactly how it ends. His world is the horror movie of political theory: the Thought Police as jump scare, Big Brother as monster, an ending that leaves you staring at the ceiling at 2 AM.

Yet I find Alduous Huxley’s Brave New World more unsettling. On the surface, 1984 is obviously worse—torture, surveillance, the systematic destruction of thought. Huxley's world is pleasant. People are happy. Soma takes the edge off. Society has eliminated almost everything unpleasant.

And that's why it's disturbing.

Because 1984 tells us what happens when we lose the ability to think. Brave New World tells us what happens when we lose the desire to think. Winston Smith fights… badly, hopelessly, but he fights. Bernard Marx and John the Savage are trapped in a mall they can't find the exit of, vaguely aware something is wrong, unable to do anything about it.

What's funny is that the two authors knew each other. Huxley sent Orwell a copy of Brave New World, and Orwell reviewed it. Two men writing about the end of the world, pausing to check if the other had done it better.

It's the difference between being chased by a monster and being slowly lulled to sleep while it stands right behind you. We're all choosing our preferred discomfort.

Take the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee. Last week, they held rates at 5.25%, kept their neutral stance, and said, "Let's wait and see." As Ashima Goyal notes, they congratulate themselves on outperformance while worrying about the future like someone checking under the bed every five minutes. The real repo rate hovers near zero. Yet they wait.

Dhananjay Sinha calls this absurd: a near-zero real rate sitting uneasily with 6.7% growth, external risks, and fragile demand. The MPC is buying time, but time isn't infinite.

Mridul Saggar is more blunt: the RBI "missed a chance to rebuild monetary space." Inflation momentum builds, and the MPC soft-pedals it. "The time was ripe," he writes, "but the RBI didn't pick the fruit."

Kalyan Ram makes two points across his pieces. First, the MPC must show the way back to 4%—waiting for confirmation is like standing in a smoke-filled room, waiting for flames before reaching for the extinguisher. Second, the RBI has bought time with borrowed dollars; India must now earn its dollars through competitiveness. The central bank has done its job. The rest is up to policy.

Indranil Pan captures the complexity. Oil fluctuated from $100 to $71 and back between June and August. How do you plan when the ground keeps shifting? Patience isn't laziness; it's a rational response to chaos.

Yet there's a cost to patience. Dipanwita Mazumdar argues the RBI can pause now, but resilient growth, uneven rainfall, and tight liquidity are preparing the ground for hikes. Not if, but when.

Gaura Sen Gupta notes that base-year revisions to GDP, CPI, IIP, and WPI add complexity, estimating potential growth requires history we no longer have. The MPC is flying with a new instrument panel, making patience and observed spillovers central. Radhika Piplani asks what would actually force a hike—a US-Iran war, Houthi attacks, Ukrainian strikes on energy, an AI boom reshaping both demand and supply. The August pause was a foregone conclusion. The real question is what comes after.

Michael Patra offers a chess analogy from Governor Das: "In cricket, you can play one shot badly and recover. In chess, one wrong move loses the game." The framework has been tested by pandemic and war and survived. But Patra's deeper point: the weight assigned to inflation is significantly larger than growth. The RBI reacts more than proportionately to price rises. That's uncomfortable for a growth-hungry nation, but it's why the system works.

Patra also dissects exchange rates. In 2025, India was hailed as about to become the fourth-largest economy. By April 2026, the IMF showed India slipping to sixth—not because we contracted (we grew 7.7%), but because of a depreciating rupee and a base-year revision. Market exchange rates are fickle, driven by sentiment, speculation, interest shifts—none reflecting economic reality. India, he reminds us, was the largest economy for much of ancient history, generating 30% of global output. "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

We're measuring ourselves with instruments that make us look smaller. Like standing on a scale that fluctuates with the weather.

Consider the by-elections. The BJP lost Bankipur for the first time in thirty years, to Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraj Party, which went from distant third to winning by 19,000 votes. Amitabh Tiwari's anatomy of the upset: voter fatigue, civic issues, candidate quality, youth discontent, unease among upper-caste voters—a perfect storm. Rajesh Mahapatra calls it "an early warning that the old script may no longer work reliably." Rajesh Ramachandran adds that Bankipur signals middle-class anger over exam failures and weak accountability. The BJP's playbook, which worked for so long, suddenly needs a rewrite.

The yen intervention offers a parallel. Japan watched its currency slide to 163 against the dollar. The BoJ and US Treasury stepped in with coordinated action. V Thiagarajan notes this is the first US intervention to support the yen in nearly thirty years—the Plaza Accord suddenly relevant again. Sanjay Mansabdar warns a carry-trade unwind could amplify volatility across stretched markets. R. Gurumurthy adds that US support signals the return of coordinated currency management as statecraft. Deepa Vasudevan draws the lesson for India: domestic debt doesn't guarantee protection from bond market meltdowns. Even with all structural advantages, confidence can erode.

Thiagarajan also reminds us, in his Big Mac Index piece, that PPP is a conceptual anchor, not a trading signal—the index endures because it's clever, but it's more metaphor than measure.

Arvind Mayaram notes the RBI mobilised nearly $49 billion via FCNR(B), ECBs, and securities. Reserves sit close to $700 billion. Yet the rupee trades around 96 to the dollar, barely stronger than before. The mechanics are understood—swapped funds, forward operations, hedging absorption. But the larger question: why does an economy with such reserves increasingly need extraordinary measures just to maintain stability?

Which brings us to another uncomfortable choice. The RBI has proposed on-tap licensing for Urban Co-operative Banks, reopening a window shut for two decades. As R. Gurumurthy asks, should we encourage more UCBs? The sector has spent twenty years being consolidated after governance failures—PMC Bank being the most painful example.

Then there's AI. Sumit Jain argues India can't afford light-touch regulation anymore—the US restricting advanced models, the UN raising safety alarms. But India's framework must protect workers. We have one of the youngest populations globally, with limited safety nets. Chirayu Sharma adds that AI isn't purely digital—it's assembled from silicon, copper, rare earths, cobalt, lithium, water. Virginia just became the first US state to tax data centre electricity, recognition that the cloud lives in concrete buildings, powered by grids.

R. Sridharan argues for a retail-funded deep-tech revolution—government finances constrained, foreign venture fickle. India's retail investors could power deep-tech ambitions, if structured right.

Krishnadevan V, across three pieces, offers sobering perspectives. India's margin trading facility stands at ₹1.43 trillion—leverage is now part of the market's structure. South Korea's lesson: when a sell-off begins, leverage determines how disorderly it becomes. WeWork India markets flexibility but monetises certainty. Enterprise clients now dominate, making it a concentrated corporate services play. And his family ratings piece reminds us that labels assigned earliest—the difficult one, the responsible one—stick longer than any credit score, and they're harder to dispute.

Rakesh Khar notes private equity's expanding footprint in schools and hospitals, filling gaps, but weak safeguards risk leaving public purpose behind. Naliniprava Tripathy's scorecard for universities shows governance and inclusion at 86/100, but learning and internationalisation at just 31/100. The foundation may be strong, but the next phase requires turning policy adoption into global outcomes.

We crave horror movies because they let us experience fear safely. We eat spicy food for the endorphin rush. We read dystopian novels to process anxieties. The discomfort is real, but the stakes are contained.

But the world isn't contained. The RBI's decisions have consequences. The yen's trajectory affects trade. AI's impact is happening now.

Yet we engage anyway. We read the analyses, follow the markets, debate the policies. Because somewhere we've decided the discomfort is worth it. Understanding the world, even when it unsettles us, is better than not understanding it.

Try the king chilli anyway. Watch the movie with the lights off. Read the policy document that makes your eyes glaze over. The discomfort, as it turns out, is the point.

Until next week, pretending not to look behind the curtain.

Phynix