DarshanChande.com

How Spirituality Makes Narcissist of Man

2012-02-17T10:07:00.001+05:30

The biggest flaw in spirituality is its exclusive focus on the inner. In spirituality everything that needs to be fixed is inside the person.

Suffering is intrinsic to our existence. There's no escape from the human condition for anyone; and a spiritual person is no exception. He also suffers. As long as the spiritual person suffers (which is always, like any other person) his focus would be fixated on the inner, that is, himself. When there is always something to fix on the inside, naturally, one won't be interested in the problems external to one. A spiritual person looks at the problems of the world, and internalizes them. Meaning, he views everything that causes man to suffer as man's inner weakness. If you are suffering in love, he would tell you: you need to develop from the inside. Feeling anger and jealousy? Develop from the inside. The more a spiritual person suffers, the stronger his obsession with the self gets.

What is this focus on the inner? Spirituality views the world as a part of the whole. A spiritualist believes that his true nature is not his ego-self which is just an illusion created in consciousness. His true nature is the nature of the universe, the whole. Any man trapped in his consciousness, i.e. having ego-identity (which by the way includes every normal, functional human being) is imperfect and needs to develop. The state of perfectness is when one loses one's ego-self and experiences oneness or unity with Nature or the universe, or the whole, whatever that means. Both "true nature" and "the whole" are terms so fuzzy that one must be stupid to take them seriously.

Spirituality's focus is so much on the whole that it never really connects with the problems of the world. Only (non-)remedy it offers is for people to stop being people and merge into the whole. Spirituality therefore is hokum.

So called enlightened people are not free of suffering. If anything, they have built thick walls around themselves cutting them off from every element of the human world. Through reclusive practices they have mastered the art of deluding the self. At best, they have achieved unwavering focus on the self, and their obsession with the self has overridden every other drive they might have. They appear to have concern with the problems of the world, but not really. For every suffering they encounter, they view it as a sign of their imperfectness and obsess more with the self, through isolation and meditation and what not. And they offer the same to others. That's not really a concern for the world but their self-affirmation. They have effectively noting to offer the world but their own madness and narcissism.

It is impossible to care and not suffer. If there is a truly enlightened person who is free of suffering (which I don't think is possible in a normal, functional human being) then he must be a narcissist of the highest rank. He cares squat about life, the world, and other people's suffering. He is happy in his delusions. The king in the empty kingdom. He is no more alive than a piece of vegetable. Pinch him and he will crawl ever deeper into his self.

Existential awareness does make one strong from inside by enabling one have a right perspective, and that's important too. But that is philosophy. Spirituality is different in that it involves obsessing with the development of the self to the point of viewing the world as illusion and seeking the end of suffering. That is bullshit. Since there's no such thing as oneness with the whole or perpetual bliss as long as we are alive and conscious, he who believes he is there is deluding himself. And his apathy towards everything but the inner/self reeks of narcissism.

A Little Commentary on The Family and Society

2012-02-15T10:42:00.000+05:30

Some thoughts that followed my reading of The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky, a book the previous post was about —

In the book, the author talks extensively about love but hasn't gone much into the technicalities of romantic love and merely says:

None of us knows what kind of force, regardless of all reason, suddenly ties us to one particular person, and nobody can say why sometimes, equally unexpectedly, the magnet that attracted one body to another loses its pull.

Well, now we do have good enough clue about it. We know that romantic love is mating drive, and what hormones cause it, et cetera. That doesn't undermine the book's message though; but I think now that we can explain romantic love scientifically, and thereby more meaningfully, it's a good idea to do so whenever we write on this topic, because otherwise there's a lot of scope for misinterpretation, the word "love" being used for varied feelings. I have written a series of posts explaining romantic love and related issues here.

Another excerpt from the book:

The better we live the easier it is to divorce from the material point of view... Previously, it was possible to get divorced but there was no place to go. It is easier today—they are building a lot of new flats. We have become more cultural and better educated, and we are therefore more demanding of the person we live with. A lack of common interests is a widespread and sufficient reason for divorce; we do not want to lead a boring life!

I totally agree with that. And the solution the author prescribes in the last paragraph of the book is:

Both love and misfortune enter our lives unannounced, and it is not within our power to stop them. But it is totally up to us whether or not we meet them without losing our dignity, conscience and humaneness. Experience shows that family catastrophes cannot be resolved by pressurizing—evil feelings won't help; it is only like smashing your fist against the wall that has appeared between people. On the other hand, kindness will carefully and tenderly dismantle it brick by brick.

That's also right. But it shows that the book is not philosophically rigorous. This is not a criticism of the book, and doesn't invalidate the book's core message. The book belongs to a relatively simpler time (1990). In today's times I think there's only one real solution: Existential wisdom. Meaning, understanding life and existence through philosophical development.

In earlier times social conditions were different, and the evil influences (like mass media) too weren't around, and traditional wisdom was prevalent. Religion, however flawed, was much better source of moral education than mass media which is the primary vector of cultural education today. Earlier, even in imperfect marriages people didn't think of divorce because so was their conditioning. It was wrong! And large families and culturally allocated roles and duties provided people meaning despite lack of passion in marriage. Now the world has changed. We neither have that binding social structure (large family, and the traditional/cultural roles and duties), nor have right moral guidance since cultural education is coming from mass media. Both together (among other factors) make sure that people don't behave in a way they did in earlier times in dealing with family issues.

In such a scenario, the only solution I see is for people to do their own homework. Understand what society is from bottom up. Understand the importance of family in relation to human nature. Earlier this exercise was optional. Now it is mandatory.

The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky

2012-02-08T09:26:00.000+05:30

Harmanjit shared with me a remarkable book called The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky (also spelled Zhukhovit︠s︡kiĭ). The book doesn't seem to have been very popular, but it contains a world of wisdom within its less than fifty pages. Sharing some gems from it in this post:

The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky (Cover)

Quotes from The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky

In an ordinary family, I was thinking, any big quarrel may bring the partners to the verge of divorce—for they live under each other's noses and there is nowhere to escape to in order to give it time and calm down. But in a large family, even a serious discord is only with one out of five or seven and it is not at all necessary to split up... Husbandless mothers may still exist in a family like this, but there will be no fatherless children.

***

The better we live the easier it is to divorce from the material point of view... Previously, it was possible to get divorced but there was no place to go. It is easier today—they are building a lot of new flats. We have become more cultural and better educated, and we are therefore more demanding of the person we live with. A lack of common interests is a widespread and sufficient reason for divorce; we do not want to lead a boring life!

To some extent the growth in the divorce rate is a kind of a tax on good living.

***

The family is destroyed by the very concept of some ideal structure, which is almost automatically obliged to provide us with a happy life. The logic is as follows: the family is good, and I am good, but things are bad at home. Whose fault is it? Obviously, whoever is nearest to us. But the person who is nearest to us thinks exactly the same. So the destructive work starts from both sides.

***

Once an eminent Estonian scientist, Gustav Naan, wrote in Literaturnaya gazeta that the family is a self-destructive system. What a clever idea! The gradual deconstruction of the family is not an exceptional phenomenon but a normal one. It falls apart not through the fault or malicious intent of one of the partners but simply because everything on earth sooner or later falls to pieces. Do you want to preserve your house? Then repair it regularly, rebuild it, build onto it and adapt it to changes and new situations...

***

Why are you getting married? Nine girls gave nearly identical answers: In order to be happy. And only the tenth said: In order to make my husband happy. I'm afraid that she was the only one out of the ten who found happiness.

***

Divorce is quite common nowadays. It is something else that is strange—the fact that marriages based on love turned out to be the weakest ones. Yes, it is true. Those who were looking for some practical purpose in marriage are still living together—maybe not ideally, but still they are together. However, marriages founded on the most impassioned love broke shatteringly into pieces.

***

In marriages of love, both of course are counting on their love remaining as passionate as it was before the marriage. Whet safety margin is there in passionate love? Unfortunately, not everything depends on our intentions...

Love's passion is the greatest of joy and the greatest miracle. It has thousands of virtues. It lacks only one thing—stability.

***

Millions of people suffer because love-passion becomes weaker with time. But nature gave us quite an adequate compensation: love-friendship, which grows stronger all the time. Where human relations are being built, the house builds itself automatically.

***

The experience of happy family should be studied on its black days.

***

Both love and misfortune enter our lives unannounced, and it is not within our power to stop them. But it is totally up to us whether or not we meet them without losing our dignity, conscience and humaneness. Experience shows that family catastrophes cannot be resolved by pressurizing—evil feelings won't help; it is only like smashing your fist against the wall that has appeared between people. On the other hand, kindness will carefully and tenderly dismantle it brick by brick.

Download The Family and Society by Leonid Zhukhovitsky. If the link stops working, notify me through a comment or contact me with your email.

Society and Morality: Why You Don't Have a Right to Be a Jerk

2012-02-01T22:16:00.000+05:30

Individualism is a popular ideology today. Everybody wants to live one's own way, free of all control. "Be what you are", "Don't let others tell you how to live your life" — These words pass for wisdom these days. Well, I won't say that one should give up one's individualism, but the kind of people I see fighting for their "rights" and the intentions they carry, that frightens me sometimes. A few days back I was having a discussion with a couple of friends about morality and desirability of social control, and at some point one of them said: we have no ethical/moral obligation towards society. He even went on to say that everyone has a right to be a jerk (as long as one isn't directly harming anyone else). Oh boy!

He who says he has a right to be a jerk as long as he isn't harming anyone doesn't know the fundamentals of human world. He clearly doesn't understand what it is to be a member of the civilized society, and how our world works. No one has a "right" to be a jerk; in fact, everyone has a "duty" to live in the interest of the society. To understand how, let's look into what society is —

What Is Society?

Society is a group of interdependent individuals who have aligned each-other's self-interests to maximize their welfare. It's a thoroughly interconnected system. Therefore, any change in one part of the society affects related individuals through chain reaction. When one is sick, one goes to the clinic/hospital where someone is employed to serve one. Hadn't it been a "society", the person who is doctor could be doing something else, instead of binding himself to one profession for all his life. What we have is like division of work and responsibilities whereby we enjoy higher efficiency and higher welfare. Every person, by virtue of being human, is a party to the implicit contract that is society. If there were no doctors, no engineers, no farmers, no dairymen, then humans would not be living this comfortable a life. Dependence would be much less, but so would be welfare. Totally remove dependence and we are in a jungle! Apparently, those who believe they are "independent" don't see this.

This system is society. In society, everybody's life is so intricately interwoven (and higher welfare is the purpose) that it is everybody's responsibility to act in the common interest, that is, in the interest of the society. That doesn't preclude anyone from having fun (besides, higher wellbeing itself is fun). And granted, no one has good enough judgement to understand with total precision what is best for the society in every situation. But if there is anything that maintains order in the society, and can sustain the comfortable life that we currently have, it is cooperative and responsible behavior, and not the pursuit of selfish individual goals on the name of individualism. Society is a delicate organism. And it's a mistake to think we are not a part of the organism. We may not realize it – because we have got so used to it – but we are continually interacting with other agents of the society for our living. If the system disappeared, maybe we can't survive at all individually; or at least that survival would not be pleasant.

Now looking at society another way: Society is like a corporation whose interest is to maximize the welfare of its members. (That way we can view it as a "cooperative society" too.) Each member is rewarded according to his contribution (like employees have different salaries), but no member has a right to remain idle, much less a right to be a jerk. He who is not contributing anything to the goal of the society (which is collective welfare) is a freeloader and can be pressurized to be productive. And he who engages in activities which the effective majority in a given society views as detrimental to the social good would be punished by the society. Here, of course, I won't say that the majority in a society is always right, but nor is an individual who rebels always right. Due to the complexity of societal structure, there will always remain this tension between individual and society in many areas. However, the point of this article is that it's a good idea to understand what society is, and why social good matters more than individual good.

Society is a system of interdependence for optimum welfare; and belonging to one isn't a choice. Therefore, individual freedom is a delusion which has to be enjoyed within certain boundaries. Claiming total freedom in society is immature to say the least. A human being in civilized world is born directly into a society. To think that society is an illusion, or that one is (or can be) totally free and independent individual who doesn't have to care about social welfare (welfare of others) is a monumental error.

And here comes morality. Simply said, morality is an informal rule of conduct for healthy coexistence in a society. Therefore —

Social responsibility = moral behavior

We do have moral obligation towards the society in the form of cooperative and responsible conduct. To refuse to accept this is to refuse to be a mature, adult human being.

This brings to mind: back in my spirituality days I received many a praise for saying this: "An enlightened person lives on the tune of Nature. He doesn't need to know what is moral or immoral." Now I say enlightened my ass! One must be a narcissist of the highest rank to have such a thought!

Provocative Clothes and Rape: A Response

2012-01-24T09:51:00.001+05:30

This is in response to the comments and discussions (on this blog, other networks, and offline) that followed previous article: Provocative Clothes and Rape: Are Men Alone Responsible?

In the said article my point is: when a woman wears provocative clothes knowing (and often with intention) that it is going to attract excessive male attention by appealing to sexuality it is irresponsible on her part because she is knowingly running into the risk of being harassed; and if she gets raped, she is partly responsible for the tragedy. By not wearing "provocative" (try to see the literal meaning of the word) women can at least avoid the avoidable trouble. After all, not exposing body parts excessively in a provocative way is not such a discomfort!

What I find interesting is that most people who responded to the article committed strawman fallacy. Stawman fallacy is when your originally expressed point X is misinterpreted in distorted form Y, and then that distorted interpretation Y (called strawman) is attacked, while leaving your original point untouched. If you go through the comments to the article you will see that the most repeated form of strawman is something like this:

Rape doesn't happen only with women wearing provocative clothes. It's mostly decent and weak women who fall prey to rapists. Since decent women are raped too, that means men are perverts. Women are innocent, because those decent women don't do anything to provoke rapists. Apply stricter controls and don't let rapists get away with their crime.

Well, I am all for punishing rapists. (And this was clearly said in the article itself.) But did you notice how the original point is lost? No one, not a single person who argued on the article (online and offline) seemed to understand that the article is only talking about 1) the relationship between provocative clothes and rape, and not about rape in general; and 2) the ridiculous movement for women's right to freely wear whatever men can. That's what the article is about. Since it can't be denied that there is a relationship between provocative clothes and rape, it must be admitted that it is irresponsible on part of women to wear body-exposing clothes where it is risky. As for why can't women wear what men can, the explanation is pretty clearly given. That's all there is to understand in the article.

I don't deny that decent and weak women are raped, and that the rapists must be made to pay for it. But I am not talking about those instances at all. My argument was about the instances of women wearing provocative clothes, thereby being irresponsible, and the fundamentally flawed reason they give for it, that is: if men can wear anything, why can't women. This reasoning is flawed because men and women are different biologically. (For detailed explanation, read this, and this.) Now if we must blame someone for sexism, blame Nature. But ignore the reality and we will pay the cost in varied forms.

If one says that there is zero correlation between provocative clothes and arousal of sexual urges in men, one needs to reconsider it. Provocative clothes produce two effects. 1) Not only do they make the wearer of those more vulnerable to sexual advances from men (at a biology level that's exactly the intention) but 2) once a man is aroused by looking at a women wearing such clothes, he may become more prone to target someone "easy"' to release his sexual energies on. Now of course, one would say it's totally the man's fault. Well, yes. So punish the man all you want. But I am still referring to the full reality. We rational beings can easily say it's the man's fault, but the reality doesn't care what we think and say. Punishing the man (which is only right) isn't going to solve the problem. Because the root of the problem is not purely society. The root of it is in the biology. While catching the criminal is a remedy at a social level, what about what happens at a biology level? How are laws going to change the natural biological processes?

Following part is an extension of the article:

How are laws going to change the natural biological processes? Therefore in a good society we must expect "decent" behavior from everyone. Many of the indecencies are not illegal, but they are still indecent because they are not conducive to good health of a society. Excessively bold sexual behavior, certain bad habits like drug addiction, using swear words etc may not all be illegal in society but these elements do affect people negatively. That's why we call that behavior indecent. Wearing provocative (thus, indecent) clothes for attracting male attention does have its effects. As I mentioned in the previous article, it is a maneuver coming from the animal nature to attract mating partners. In civilized societies now we have better mechanisms in place for that purpose, which suit our human nature. Behaving excessively like animal in any respect is considered indecent. That's why we expect men also to not approach women like an animal, but instead use decent, socially appropriate routes. When a man is desperate for sex his (animal) nature is to exercise bold sexual behavior, and when a woman is desperate her nature is to pull bold attraction maneuvers. So if we take into account differences in biology of man and woman, a woman wearing provocative clothes is essentially doing the same thing that a cleavage-gazing pervert does. Here some people will jump up saying that I can not generalize that every woman wearing provocative clothes is desperate. Well, then not every man who stares at boobs is pervert, too! Get the point? It's naturally fun, healthy in a way, but indecent nonetheless when done excessively.

As I said above, indecency is any behavior which is not conducive to good health of a society. And indecency of wearing unusually bold, provocative clothes affects normal functioning of society by affecting mental states of men. As much as we like to believe from rational point of view that it is those men's fault for not controlling themselves, we must not ignore the full reality which includes natural processes that cause it all. Expecting everyone to operate rationally is good; punishing those who allow passion to overpower their reason and commit crimes is also right; but assuming that humans are perfectly rational is a grave mistake. That can never be, even!

Therefore, punish rapists; admonish all kinds of indecencies; but at the same time let's not forget that we all must always act responsibly and with decency if we wish to be in a good society. And "we" includes men and women both.

Provocative Clothes and Rape: Are Men Alone Responsible?

2012-01-08T10:44:00.000+05:30

Popular view today is that women can wear anything they like just like men do, however exposing the clothes; and if men can't control themselves then it's entirely men's fault. It's become fashionable to fight for this freedom for women. Now this is going to be unpopular, but I strongly disagree.

People who say women can wear anything that men can are ignorant of biological make up of man and woman, or at least don't want to acknowledge it, which is a grave mistake. Agree, that even burqa-clad women are ogled and raped. So I am not saying men are clean and innocent when it comes to indecency and rape. It's just that when one says women can wear anything they like just like men do, that's not wise. And especially the women crusading for this right are not only ignorant of the biological differences in man and woman, but are also hypocrites. This latter point is seldom, if ever, brought up.

Let me ask the women obsessed with provocative clothes the question: What is the need to wear clothes that expose body parts that cause male sexual attraction. E.g. a blouse showing excessive cleavage and the like. (Everybody knows the kind of clothes I am referring to, so not describing them in more detail.) Is it because such clothes are more comfortable? That can't be, and I have got at least two points for this:

The knowledge that a particular clothing is unusual and is going to attract excessive male attention itself won't allow the comfort in wearing it.
Secondly, if such short clothes were really comfortable then why only women are more obsessed with wearing them? (Do men wear shirts exposing their waistline, or deep-necks, or sleeve-less as much as women do?)

Although the definition of "unusually bold clothing" differs from culture to culture; but say if a particular culture is relatively more liberal and within it it is common to wear certain clothes that are considered unusual and indecent in other cultures, then those clothes won't be "provocative" in the first place. Because if the culture is really liberal then men as well as women are liberal, and therefore the men won't be "provoked" by those clothes. So that's alright.The hypocrite women I am referring to are those who are fully aware of the boundary of their culture and knowingly wear unusually bold clothes (within their particular culture).

The aim of modern clothing is hardly the comfort of the wearer. The aim is to look attractive. And when it comes to cleavage-showing blouse, or mini skirt or any such provocative clothing, it's about attracting attention by appealing to male sexuality.

Most of the women from this camp, I am sure, would also express problems with men staring at their cleavage and other body parts that are actually made to stand out by wearing designed-for-the-purpose clothes. Simple question then should be, why wear those clothes if you are going to have a problem with people staring? Note that I am not trying to justify the indecency of men, but am just putting the other side through scrutiny. No one can deny that body-exposing clothes for women are for attracting male attention. If they wear such clothes one can fairly assume that they want to be looked at. Upon having a closer look one finds what those women actually have a problem with is the stares of the people who they don't like. When an ugly man stares at a woman, he is pervert; and when a hot man stares at a woman, he is interested! That's what it is.

So, first of all, these women-folks need to give up their hypocrisy if they want to address the problem in a meaningful way.

Women, you show cleavage not for that blouse is comfortable for you, but for you want to attract attention of hot and attractive members of male species. But by doing so you attract not-so-desirable gazes too, which makes you feel insecure and threatened. Now you don't want to take accountability for your part, therefore like a narcissist, instead of admitting your own intentions, you give entire male species the label of perverts!

Unregulated sexual behavior is wrong, but then equally wrong is provoking it in public places, now that in a civilized world we have better mechanisms available for finding a partner of the opposite sex. If we take into account differences in biology of man and woman, it should be clear that a woman wearing provocative clothes is essentially doing the same thing that a cleavage-gazing pervert does. But pervert is often the latter! What is needed to be understood is that men are caught "active" because so is their sexual biology. Since male is designed to seduce, and female is designed to be seduced, we won't find an active female. While men have to make bold advances, females just have to pull maneuvers. Indirect. That's the reason why always males are culprits. Women are passive, but in such cases equally culprits. This is nearly impossible to get people to understand because it requires more than ordinary common sense!

Now let's look at some more technicality. Being attracted to female body parts comes from our animal nature, and we call it wrong (even though it is not quite so in natural world) because we are civilized creatures. But the truth is, attracting the members of opposite sex by various maneuvers is also something that we have learned when we were apes, and therefore is the most animalistic trick to find a partner for mating. Today's women wearing provocative clothes may not be looking out for a partner for mating, but their desire to look attractive is their biology doing the job already. It is therefore improper and unwise to allow one gender to pull explicit animalistic maneuvers and blame the other gender of getting affected by it. We haven't outlawed Nature yet.

Coming back to rape. One thing is clear that women wear provocative clothes to attract male attention (mostly consciously, or otherwise at a biological level anyway) and the appeal is to sexuality. The trick is the same that many creatures in natural world employ to attract mating partners. Now take this bitter pill: Rape is likely evolved by natural selection as a secondary mating strategy. Wait, no, I will never advocate rape on this grounds. However, this theory is not unfounded, and one would understand it if one understands Nature, biology and evolution mechanism. What I intend to draw attention to is the relation between wearing provocative clothes and rape as the relation between the maneuver and the result it is fundamentally intended for – mating. Since we live in a complex civilized world sometimes the result, mating, is involuntary, but in case where provocative clothes are worn the result is nonetheless invited by the maneuver; because biologically speaking, there's no other reason to expose body parts arousing sexuality.

Rape can never be justified on natural grounds. Since we are civilized we must regulate our behavior; and the breach of it must be adequately punished. But controlling male behavior is addressing only half of the problem. In fact, controlling only male behavior and giving free rein to women to wear whatever they like is not only utterly unwise, but is cruelty to men, and would likely exacerbate the problem. One must understand the powerful laws of Nature. If we need to address the problem of rape meaningfully, we must curtail excessively animalistic behavior in both genders.

Wearing of provocative clothes by women, and bold sexual advances by men are two sides of a coin. Don't make a mistake of curtailing only one. Rapers are perverts, no doubt; but it is also irresponsible on part of women to wear provocative clothes, and therefore they also deserve part of the blame.

Follow discussion on Google+

How Evolution Actually Works

2012-01-04T02:13:00.002+05:30

This post is an explanation (though non-technical) of how evolution actually works, in contrast to how most people think about it.

Note that I am not aware of how prevalent is the misunderstanding this post attempts to correct. It is possible that fewer people are under the misunderstanding than I think. I decided to write about it because most people around me aren't aware of the actual evolution mechanism. Moreover, I remember how it was taught to me in school, and the way it was taught was misleading. If that's how evolution is still taught then I believe this post will be useful in clarifying the mechanism.

How Evolution Actually Works

Common notion of evolution is that organisms adapt to suit their environment. Wrong!

Organisms don't adapt to suit their environment. Random mutations are always happening in organisms, but only those mutations are successful which produce alterations which are allowed to continue by their current environmental conditions. When the process of certain alteration is complete it appears as if the change of feature in a particular organism happened to suit the environment. But the fact is, mutations for that same change may have happened many times in the past, but only this time the environmental conditions were favorable for the organism with altered feature to survive, and thus for the altered feature to become normal.

Confused? Take the example of giraffe's neck. It is mostly taught in schools (at least in my school it was taught so) that giraffe's neck became long because they moved from savannah (grassland) to the areas with tall trees in times of food scarcity. A long neck was required for them to reach the leaves high up the trees. Hence, over many generations through evolution their neck became long! This is an oversimplification of the process of natural selection. It gives an impression that environmental changes precede alterations in organism's features. In reality it is not quite so.

Let's see what's happened in case of giraffe's neck. Long neck resulted in giraffes through many mutations over time. The contribution of each single mutation is understandably only slight. And such mutations take place from time to time "randomly" regardless of environmental conditions, not only for neck but for all sorts of alterations in an organism. With respect to the above hypothesis, here's what must have happened considering how evolution actually works: When giraffes were living in savannah they did not require long neck. Rather, long necks might have posed danger to their survival by making them noticeable to predators from a distance. So, whenever the random mutation for long neck happened, the giraffe with newly acquired slightly longer neck would be hunted down by the predator (owing to its long neck) and the mutation thus would go unsuccessful since the animal wouldn't pass on its genes for long neck! Now, say, the giraffes have shifted from grasslands to the forests with tall trees. Random mutation for long neck happens again. (Mutations always keep happening randomly!) This time the giraffe with slightly long neck survives, and reproduces! Because in their new environment, long neck doesn't attract predators' notice. And with further random mutations for long neck, over many generations, the neck goes on increasing as long as the environmental conditions don't restrict it by putting the giraffe at a disadvantage for survival and/or reproduction. Moreover, in the areas with tall trees those giraffes with short necks become disadvantaged because they can't get food easily. The disadvantaged giraffes wouldn't be able to pass on their genes (of short neck) because they would starve and die before reproducing. It is thus said that giraffes with long necks are selected by natural selection. Of course, this process happens over long time period. (Note that this is the simplest of the hypotheses about giraffe's neck. Even if it may not be quite true in giraffe's case, it's nonetheless valid as to the point being explained.)

Let's have a look at another example. You must have seen albino people. Albinism also has emerged by random mutation, without the environment demanding it. But albinos are not common in population precisely because they are at a disadvantage in survival and reproduction. Albinos being vulnerable to harmful ultraviolet rays, and thereby skin cancer, and faring poor at finding a mate to reproduce with, restricts the genes of albinism to spread. If in the future, say, Earth's environment so changes that we no more face ultraviolet rays then randomly born albinos will have better chances of survival, and it is possible that in the long term albinism will spread enough to become a normal feature of human species! Likewise, we have every reason to think that many other alterations in human species are happening from time to time by way of random mutations, without the environment requiring it. But only those changes which don't put the bearer of the change at a disadvantage in his/her environment pass further on and become a normal feature after many generations of evolution.

The important, and often misunderstood, point about the process is this: Changes in environmental conditions don't precede alterations of features in organisms. Random mutations are always happening, and environment only allows or disallows the genes of altered features to go further. When the alteration is allowed by the environment the newly evolved feature is spread further through reproduction in the organism. When the alteration puts the organism to disadvantage in its current environment, the organism wouldn't survive and the altered feature would therefore never become normal.

In short, environment doesn't bring about the change in features. It only approves or disapproves the changes that happen on their on randomly!

Comment Policy

2012-01-03T21:55:00.001+05:30

All comments are moderated.

Comment only if you have further thoughts to share on the topic of the post that might add more value to the article.

Criticisms are welcome, but mere criticisms are unlikely to be published. A criticism must be accompanied by a detailed alternative point of view and/or explanation of your own.

Don't comment only to express appreciation and/or agreement.

Don't use Anonymous mode of commenting unless it is absolutely necessary. The option is only kept available for special cases where the comment author might not want to make his/her identity public on the Internet. However, anonymous comments are less likely to be accepted.

Comments containing abuse, swear words, harsh and insulting language will be rejected.

If you remove your comment after it has been replied to by the blog author, or anyone else, you will be permanently banned from commenting on this website.

If you have anything to say that doesn't meet the criteria of the comment policy, do not use the comment option. Use instead the contact form.

My Answer to "Do You Believe In Love?"

2012-01-01T09:35:00.001+05:30

Randomly reading my views on love in different posts on this blog one understandably gets confused as to what I actually stand for with regards to love. I am often faced with the question, "Do you believe in love?" to which most of the times I have to respond with just a smile. Next time I will instead give the link of this post!

To answer this question 500 Days of Summer style (My rating of the film: 6/10, Not recommended): "It's love. It's not Santa Claus!" You can't believe or not believe in love. It is certainly not a fantasy. Superman is a fantasy, but love actually makes you fly. It isn't just one's imagination. Imagination isn't that powerful.

Does that mean love exists for real? Well, let's not get carried away. The answer is not so simple, because this is actually a disguised query. In a disguised query one isn't really asking what the question appears to be about. Say, person A defines love as a combination of respect-empathy-compassion (which for me is "true love"), and for person B love is the classic symptoms of "romantic love", i.e. obsession-attachment-euphoria. Now when they ask "Do you believe in love?" they are not really asking the same thing. It's a disguised query in that person A actually wants to know whether you believe that sharing of respect-empathy-compassion between two persons is possible for life, while person B's query is about the obsession-attachment-euphoria kind of romantic love.

For the moment let's focus on person B's query. It can be further looked into to see whether he is asking if romantic love (obsession-attachment-euphoria) exists at all, or he is asking if it lasts for life. If the query is the former then as I said above, love certainly exists. (Who denies that those feelings exist?!) If the query is the latter, i.e. whether romantic love lasts for life, then the answer is negative. And if one believes that it lasts for life then that's a fantasy! That's the reason why I often speak against mass media (TV, Hollywood, fiction books) feeding people with "fantasy ideals" of love and thereby raising their expectations from life to unrealistic level which makes them end up in misery.

Mostly I see two types of people when it comes to love. Those who don't believe in love and therefore advocate only casual relationships. (Enjoy till it lasts, they would say.) And those who totally believe in fantasy ideals of love. In my opinion both are misguided. Now you must wonder why I am calling enjoy-till-lasts a misguided approach, for I just said that romantic love doesn't last for life. Well, that's true, but romantic love (or romance) is not all there is to love. In fact, true love isn't romantic. THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT. True love consists of respect-empathy-compassion. Similar to what best friends share, only much more in degree. That's the love our "human nature" craves. Romantic love (obsession-attachment-euphoria) pertains to our "animal nature", and it's there for the purpose of enabling "mating". (More on romantic love.) We don't have full control on our animal nature. That's the reason we are pretty much powerless when romantic love is on.

Autonomy is the hallmark of being human. That part of one's behavior on which one doesn't have autonomous control pertains to one's animal nature. Since we are fundamentally animals we can't disown our animal nature which serves biological goals (or natural goals). Therefore, we can't not develop romantic love, by choice, and be in a relationship. But importantly, when romantic love wanes (and it does), that's not the end of a relationship. If one believes that romantic love is the thing then one is utterly misguided. For, such life would never be fulfilling. It would, if we were just animals; but as more-than-animals we have more sophisticated needs from a relationship. Trust, sincerity, devotion, solidity, consistency, cooperation... These are essentially human qualities on which our social world is founded. Striped of these qualities we would be living in a jungle! Enjoy-till-it-lasts is a denial of these human qualities! That's what is wrong with this mindset. A human being can never have fulfilling life with this mindset.

Enjoy-till-it-lasts mindset is animalistic and out-and-out narcissistic. Who would decide if it's still enjoyable? There are two parties in a relationship. What if one person stops enjoying it while the other still wants to enjoy it? (And that's the case most of the times!) See? That's why it's narcissistic. To say enjoy-till-it-lasts is to say: I am in only till I enjoy it.

Talking about love and not acknowledging the impermanence of romantic love isn't going to lead to a meaningful conclusion. Because then believing in love would be to believe that romantic love lasts "forever" (meant-to-be, soul mates etc) – which is not true and will only bring misery if earnestly expected; and to not believe in love is to carry enjoy-till-it-lasts mindset (or to completely keep away from a relationship) which isn't conducive to fulfillment in human life.

Do I believe in love?

If given only two choices, I would live with a suited person for life without romantic love, sharing only true love (respect-empathy-compassion); but would be wary of making a decision to be with someone carrying the enjoy-till-it-lasts mindset. Fortunately, in a serious lifelong relationship one can maintain some romance (not extreme passion and euphoria) throughout life of a relationship by conscious measures. One must only give up the fantasy ideals of romantic love and learn the importance of true love, and live like a mature human being rather than taking to infantile rambling for romance and passion.

All that said, I am aware that sometimes the natural forces take the better of us. Agree that seduction is really a fun game whether it's boldly played with sexual intent or by subtle way of romantic love; but that's not the best way for humans to be in love. In any case, a clear understanding is important so that there's no disconnect between what you were looking for and what you ended up with.

For me love is more than romance. As much as I am vulnerable to romantic love, I know what romantic feelings are for; and as much as I am open to enjoying the magic of romantic love, I value true love (which emerges when romance subsides) more than romantic love. I can't conceive a serious committed relationship with a woman who doesn't have this understanding.

Determinism, Free Will and Moral Responsibility

2011-12-28T08:53:00.000+05:30

Determinism has no bearing on moral responsibility.

Determinism is linked to moral responsibility by some people in a sense that if determinism is true then we don't have free will, and if we don't have free will then how can we hold someone responsible for what he does?

To begin with, I will declare my position on both determinism and free will. I do believe determinism is true. As for free will, I think determinism doesn't necessarily preclude free will. However, the answer to the question of free will isn't so simple in that it depends on the level from where we are looking at life. (Read my case for free will for detailed account of my view.) If we look at life from the point outside of (or prior to) our consciousness then we are but passive atoms and molecules in motion subject to the laws of physics, and hence we can't be said to have free will. But I believe that since we don't exist (as an autonomous ego-entity, with the ability to see itself as distinct from the universe) outside of our consciousness, this question is only relevant after the point where we came to exist, because it's about "us" having or not having the will. We exist only through our consciousness, and therein we do have free will. (That's why I can even think about it now!) Saying that free will is an illusion would be to say that we too are illusions; and if everything is illusion then we must accept that that's the only way things are, and that automatically renders everything real. Therefore, I lean towards the position that we do have free will.

[Comments on my stance on free will must go to this post and not on the current one, as the main topic here is different.]

Are you thinking that this is the argument I am going to use for unlinking determinism from moral responsibility? Well, No! Rather, I am going to concede for this post that we don't have free will. And still I have a case for moral responsibility! Not that I am afraid that the people linking determinism and moral responsibility are going to be taken seriously, but still just for the sake of discussion, here I present my case for moral responsibility in absence of free will.

A Case for Moral Responsibility in Absence of Free Will

We don't have free will. That means whatever action one takes is caused by myriad other factors, not by one's own will, thus making the agent free of responsibility of that action. According to these people, if someone commits a crime, we can't hold him morally responsible. It follows that there's no question of punishment. Appalling that would be! Right?

Well, hold on, says I. Okay, we don't have free will. Now say, Mr. X has raped a woman, and you are saying that he is not responsible for it on account of lack of free will. But when you tell me to not punish him, aren't you assuming that I have free will to take the decision whether to punish him or not? If there's no free will, no one has free will. So, you can't blame me for punishing Mr. X, the rapist, any more than you can blame him for his crime! You can't even ask me to consider it because I don't have free will to consider it with, man! I will punish him, and that punishment might well be "caused" by his criminal action quite in accord with determinism! See the point?

To consider whether we should hold someone morally responsible for his bad actions, referring to the lack of free will, is itself an act that requires free will, whether real or illusory. Since I have already agreed for this post that we don't have free will it must be illusory. So, let's say using an illusory free will, you decide that the rapist should not be punished because he doesn't have free will; but still the decision to not hold him accountable or punish him is itself arrived at using free will (however illusory)! And if you think we could use our illusory free will to consider whether or not to hold him accountable then why except him from the use of the same illusory free will? Do you see the implication such thinking will have on the society? Disastrous! So, why not instead by using the illusory free will take the decision of punishing him and thereby save the society of the doom!

Actually, there's no need of free will to punish an action which is detrimental to one's survival. Our instincts are enough to make us take the counter actions. For those people, to act otherwise, i.e. to defend someone because there's no free will, is to use one's (illusory, yeah?) free will in taking the decision, and thereby acting against their own position; or otherwise, insane – for choosing to run into disaster when the better decision could be taken just as well!

Hence, to those intellectual perverts (yes, that's what I call them who "seriously" live with such absurd views – and there are quite a few around me, if you're wondering!): As long as humans haven't totally lost sanity whether we believe we have free will or not, people will still be held morally responsible and accordingly be punished as well.

How Non-Critical Thinkers Create Problems

2011-12-19T20:46:00.000+05:30

It's a sad truth that most people in the world are non-critical thinkers. By non-critical thinkers here I mean non-philosopher type; those who aren't interested in understanding about life, the human nature, etc.

Something happened at my home this morning that I thought I could use as an example of how non-critical thinkers are good at creating problems in their (and other people's) lives without having the ability to realize that they are doing so. By the way, the non-critical thinker in this case is my mom!

So yes, in our residential society there's this garbage man who cleans the building premises, staircases, etc, and collects garbage from every house every morning. He collects garbage simultaneously while cleaning the stairs and the floor around the doors. To optimize his time, what he does is ring a doorbell and goes back to the cleaning job; because obviously no one opens the door right at the moment the doorbell rings. And if he waited at each door, say, on average 30 seconds, then for collecting waste from four doors he would, on average, be wasting two minutes (30 seconds X 4 homes). Two minutes, by the way, is also the average time he takes to clean the entire area of one particular floor. (Time figures are taken for the example such that it makes the explanation simple.) Yes, so what he does is this. He would ring a doorbell and get back to continue his work. And when the door opens he would take the waste bin and empty in into the big waste bucket he slides along with him.

Now looking closer into his working. Since it's his every day job, after many days of experience he would get used to the whole timing thing. For example, he knows that on average it takes 30 seconds for our door to open; also, it is best for him if our door opens when he has cleaned a certain area of the floor, after which he has to change the direction and angle from which he sweeps his broom. (It's like his task is divided into parts, and it's better if the task is interrupted after the completion of parts than at any random moment.) So, he would ring a bell at the time such that till the door opens he has completed that part of the task which I mentioned. For that's optimizing his time and efforts and gives him highest efficiency. (Of course, since there are four doors the actual efficiency management job is more complex, but it is achieved by this very process which I stated in a simplified form.)

Continuing the scenario, since he has to (or he is determined to) maintain his efficiency thus achieved, if my mom takes less than average time to open the door, she won't find him at the door when she opens it, and therefore will have to wait a few seconds till he completes the part (that I stated above) of the task and comes to collect waste. If, on the other hand, on some day my mom takes a few seconds more than the average time to open the door then he would have had to wait a few seconds, causing him a loss of efficiency. If this "deviation" from the average time to open the door is little (and of course, little deviations naturally happen everyday but that's fine), there isn't a problem. But if the deviations are large, i.e., the amount of time taken to open the door increases far more than the average time it takes, and if that is repeated day after day then it is understandable that the garbage man isn't going to like it; and he would have to work out his "most efficient strategy" of time management all anew!

That's what happened today. Actually, since last two days I have changed my morning routine somewhat and so the time of my having lunch has shifted. Consequently, the time of mom's cooking has shifted, to coincide with when the garbage man usually comes. A day before yesterday when the doorbell rang, my mom was cooking and so it took her far more than average time to open the door. About 1 minute, which is double of the average time. I was eating my lunch (Yes, I already start eating while the food is cooking, and it arrives into my plate in installments!) and getting restless while mom was stuck with the chapati she had to finish before rushing for the door. When the door opened, the man, as expected, was waiting at the door. Again yesterday the same thing happened. This time around the man grumbled something at mom out of displeasure. Seeing it, this thought flashed through my mind: "From tomorrow this poor man should ring the doorbell a minute in advance so that he doesn't have to wait long like this." Ringing the doorbell by taking the average time as 1 minute (instead of 30 seconds) he could make the completion of his that part of the task and the opening of our door coincide again.

This morning, surprisingly, I think, that's what he did. But sadly, when the doorbell rang, mom was free and she took hardly 5 seconds to open the door carrying a waste bag. And then – and this is the proof that he had recalculated the time – she had to wait for about 55 seconds till he came to the door. (If he hadn't recalculated the time, mom would have had to wait only 25 seconds.) At this, mom got real angry at him for keeping her waiting at the door for almost a minute while she had other things to do! This time around he was prepared with a verbal attack of his own. And you imagined right what happened. A squabble followed. Not going into the immaterial details, but at the end of the fight none of the parties, obviously, were pleased. (I hope there's no after-effects of this event to be faced in the future.)

What I gathered from this? I think it was unreasonable of my mom to get angry at him. Here's why: Since for past two days she (or I should say "we") had been spoiling the poor man's time management, today he came with a correction in his time management strategy, which was only right and rational on his part; but because of our varying deviations from the average time to open the door, things didn't go as they should have and mom got "punished". If we look at it justly, she got punished for what she did in the past two days. She deviated from the usual pattern, for two days in a row, which forced the man to reformulate his plans, and she deviates again today and gets punished. Twice the man got punished (about 30 seconds each time), and once mom did (55 seconds). On the whole it had got automatically even.

If mom was a critical thinker she would have seen this whole thing through and applied the necessary corrections in the following days instead of getting unnecessarily angry at the man. If I was in my mom's place, I would, in the following days, simply open the door taking less then average time and the man would automatically adapt his plans to match both our time. After that all I had to do is avoid large deviations from the average time, and in any case not repeat it, which is only fair. I think this understanding is necessary.

One has to know the human nature, and understand and respect everybody's desire and tendency to act for one's wellbeing, which in this case was the efficiency the man got through his time management. As long as possible, we should try to cooperate with each other in achieving that state which is most advantageous for everyone.

But ah, who thinks so much! Aren't you also wondering why I am making such big deal out of an incidence which no one looks into this closely? (Well, I just thought there was some lesson in it.) What mom thinks is that it's alright to make him wait at the door, after all it's his job; but how could he ring the doorbell and then not be there when the door is opened! Yes, she's got a point. But look what happened when she acted on that point.

In the world there arise myriad types of problems where critical thinking can be used to the common advantage. This example was far from excellent or comprehensive, I know. (Rather a clumsy one.) The incidence, however, shows an important point: There are so many cases happening in life where problems and miseries are caused because people don't understand life well. Humans don't understand other humans. Neither do I understand everything perfectly, but perfection is never the point. The more we understand life and the human nature, the smoother our transactions get.

Philosophers and critical-thinkers see life much more closely than ordinary people do. They see things not seen by others. And so their actions are often likely to be more efficient and yielding in terms of human well being. I am not saying that all philosophers and critical thinkers use their best judgement in every situation; but they certainly have the ability to act in a much more amicable way than the ordinary people who don't understand life. This is true especially of the thinkers who have well developed ethical and moral sense, which by the way is a function of critical thinking. Hence, we need more people to be interested in philosophy and critical thinking and, in general, understanding life.

Freedom Always Trumps Social Control – Right or Wrong?

2011-12-14T20:58:00.000+05:30

A blogger friend (who I respect) wrote an article Change Is a Choice in which she says:

Freedom always trumps social control. (By social control she means legal enforcement against people doing what they like as long as they are not harming others.)
Laws prohibiting terrorism are moral and just, while laws prohibiting drug use are not so. (The reason she gives is that, unlike a terrorist, a drug-doer doesn't harm anyone else but himself.)
Morality can't be externally imposed. That which is outside the domain of choice is outside the domain of morality. (This I don't disagree with, by the way.)
Even if it means having to live with problems, or wait long for betterment, freedom to live as one likes is a must. The "do-gooders" – even well-intentioned ones – have no right to decide for others what is right.

The reader can learn her point of view by following the original article and the comments thereof linked above.

My objection: "Freedom always trumps social control" sounds very wise and nice, but I have a problem with the word "always". My stance: Controls are necessary to the extent people are ignorant. The following post is my case against the statement "freedom always trumps control" with regards to the objection I stated.

I think that it is a very delicate and complex issue and must not be dealt with as black and white. I don't largely disagree with her, but I don't fully agree too, because the use of the word "always" indicates that she treats it as black and white. By doing so, she suggests a solution to social problems, which is less or no control by the government, while I am at a loss for perfect solution. I do not think that this issue can be resolved so simply without doing more harm than benefit. I would be satisfied with having no perfect solution but would be wary of suggesting a black and white solution.

My arguments

When a child is fascinated by fire and is running into it, doesn't a parent have a right to stop or control it? The child would then cry and scream, perhaps, for being thwarted. But so, should it be allowed to run into the fire saying that it has a right to learn for himself that fire is hot, and that that would be a lesson better learned? The child might get severely burned, right? Similarly, we put control on terrorists; impose our moral standard on them. Isn't that desirable?

The instinct to control collective social behavior isn't wrong in itself. I also tend to think the instinct to control has an evolutionary significance. Like, if parents didn't feel an instinct to control their children's behavior, the infants might not survive. At larger, social, level too a similar arrangement is at work.

If one agrees that a parent can control a child, then why can't a government control its people? Let's view the family as an organism and an individual as one of the cells that make the organism. The society is exactly the same kind of organism as the family but of a much bigger size. The instinct to control is the instinct to increase the survival and well being of the organism. The organism itself is of prime importance and not its individual cells. Because individual cells can only exist if the organism itself is there! So, each and every cell's primary interest should be to maintain the existence of the organism which houses them, and not their own interest alone because that would in principle lead to tragedy of the commons, killing the organism and with it all its cells. If all cells want to exist then they are automatically obliged to see the interest of the organism as above their own.

Now, all cells do want to exist. Removing the metaphor, all people do want to exist and thrive. (Who doesn't?) So they are automatically obliged to see the interest of the society as above their own individual interest. Because human societies are such that all humans are interdependent. No one can survive alone on one's own. A human being in a civilized society is, by birth, a part of the society. Any person thinking of himself as a distinct, independent individual who can think only for himself, is committing a fallacy that in principle would lead to "tragedy of the commons", as I mentioned above. Hence, if one believes that one wants to have a good life then one is automatically obliged to not act in a way that only serves one's own selfish interests, without benefiting at all to the society. Because just by existing, one is a cost to the society.

Assuming that we have immaculate and infallible mechanism to measure moral judgement, I would go so far as to say that any human being who is able-bodied and able-minded, but isn't contributing to social well being, and thus is only a cost to the society can be imposed external morality by those whose judgement is better. The problem (which I am fully aware of) is in the measurement of who is right and wrong. We don't have immaculate and infallible capacity or mechanism of judgement. And for that there is no solution. That is what makes the issue grey. And there I don't see black and white answer. There is no solid line which divides grey from black and white. So all through the grey continuum, we can't tell for sure where control is right and where it is wrong because it's subject to subjective judgement of people.

What my friend suggests here is: Treat the grey as white ("always freedom"), precisely because it is grey. On the other hand, the position of "always control" would be like saying: Treat the grey as black. What I am saying is: Treat the grey as "grey"!

Not all people know what is in best interest of the society. And quite a few these days blatantly declare that they don't even care. This blatant class doesn't deserve to live, frankly. Not that I am going to shoot them, don't worry! It's just that their life is a waste, and a contradiction in itself. They want to exist, but they don't care whether the society that keeps them alive exists. Myopic! These people need strong controls. Then there's the class which means well, but hasn't the right judgement as to what is the best interest of the society. These need good education first. But if education doesn't work because of whatever reasons ("weakness of will" being a major one) then legal controls are of help. Some of them might feel it's unjust, but in the end it's for their betterment only. The rights that they feel they are deprived of are the rights that they never actually had! They are those myopic rights that will do harm to them without them being aware of it. These days TV and certain class of films are giving people the ideas of rights (through propagating individualistic philosophy) that never should exist. Not if the organism, the society, has to exist.

My position

I think this is not only my position but is what actually happens, and will happen anyway.

I will use my best judgement in weighing each case separately to decide whether I want to vote in for control, or for freedom. It seems to be the most logical way to me. Because I can't act against my better judgement. Acting against one's better judgement is by definition immoral, isn't it?

If, say for example, the government comes up with a ban on porn, I will weigh it with my best judgement, and if I think the ban is right, I will vote in for the ban. If, in another example, the government plans to ban the whole of internet, I would probably vote in for freedom. Which side I will be, that I can not decide by some fixed rule, as my friend suggests in her article. I will use my best judgement in every situation.

I think if one puts an individual above society, then one would put freedom above control as a rule. If one puts society above individual then one will opt for using one's best judgement. And that judgement is not as a rule meant for individual, but for the greater entity which includes all individuals. It could be in favor of control, and it could be against control. Depends on the case. The focus is on social good, and not individual (personal) good alone. There will be exceptional cases where my moral standing will be put to test, and on occasions I may fail the test, since I am not perfect. But in general, this is the view I endorse.

An individual's best judgement is not always the right judgement, I know, but nor is the rule "freedom always trumps social control" always going to lead to best outcome. Besides, I just explained how the maxim is fallacious. The issue remains unsolvable. I will never claim that there is a perfect solution to this problem. I have just tried to justify my stance and my method.

Finally, another wise friend of mine gives his input which I agree with, and which quite nicely sums up my arguments:

Many people do not think of long term consequences, and not everybody is wise enough to do so. Moreover, people expect the society to pay for the consequences of their short-term thinking. It is society which has to keep a drug addict in an emergency room. It is society who has to take care of the kids of a fool who became a vegetable because he wasn't wearing a helmet when he crashed.

As long as society is providing and is responsible for an individual and for the consequences of his acts, the individual cannot claim total freedom to do whatever he wants, even if it is to harm only himself.

Update: My saying that we should put the society above individual may seem like I am suggesting one should die if it benefits the society. No, that I don't mean. Let me make it clear that the very concept of morality is to enjoy higher well being. So "self-sacrifice" defeats the purpose of moral behavior. What I am saying, in essence, is that an individual must align his/her self interest with the interests of the society, so that well being has to necessarily increase. If one thinks for oneself alone, and if all of us did that, alienation and chaos would naturally result, which would reduce the well being of all. That's what Tragedy of the Commons explains.

External links:

Sex – Love or Expression of Love

2011-12-07T12:29:00.001+05:30

Sex is neither love nor an expression of love. It's a quasi-voluntary indulgence of animal nature. Give it a status higher than that and prepare to be miserable.

That love which depends on sexual act for its expression (e.g. romantic love) is but a sexual desire in disguise of love. Romantic love is a joke.

The strict definition of "love" in this regard is: Respect, empathy, compassion. Nothing else. Because in the end only those are the things that give us deepest satisfaction from inter-human relationships. Sex is an important element of man-woman relationship, but all along it is serving to our animal side, while the human side only craves love (strictly) as defined above.

That sex is an expression of love is a widely prevalent notion. Here's my explanation against it: Love is respect-empathy-compassion. Three cases: One feels love for one's 1) mother, 2) sister, and 3) girlfriend. Meaning, one feels respect-empathy-compassion towards one's mother, sister and girlfriend. In the first two cases this love is perfectly expressed without using the channel of sex. One hugs and kisses one's mother and sister, but it isn't accompanied by sexual arousal. Hence, hugging and kissing are not by themselves sexual acts. (We do that to babies too.) So, if we say that sex is an expression of love, aren't we saying that while one can express respect-empathy-compassion towards one's mother and sister through various other means without sex, but with girlfriend the same thing love, i.e. respect-empathy-compassion needs an additional channel of sex for its expression? That doesn't make sense as to why. That means in the girlfriend case there's something else, in addition to just love i.e. respect-empathy-compassion that is being transferred between the persons, which essentially requires the channel of sex. That something else, I would say, is "mating package", which contains romance plus sexual desire.

In the girlfriend case, in contrast to the other two cases, now we have two things. Love, which is respect-empathy-compassion, and "mating package". Now this is important: Interestingly, mating package creates in one's mind an illusion of love. Meaning, when the mating package is active, one feels respect-empathy-compassion for the person one is fixated on, but it is not genuine.

Proof: When one is in "romantic love" one feels respect-empathy-compassion for the person one is fixated on, but wouldn't feel the same respect-empathy-compassion for someone else carrying the same qualities. One becomes biased. And that bias is due to romance, or the active mating package. That's the reason one feels strongly even towards a person who doesn't carry similar ideology, or continually hurts one, and is always in conflict of one kind or another. Still love! That's actually an active mating package. Hadn't it been for mating package, one wouldn't be stuck on that person, much less feel any respect-empathy-compassion.

In an ideal case it might be that one genuinely has respect-empathy-compassion for one's partner, accompanying the active mating package. But if we look at the mating package in isolation, separately, it is clearly not a sign of genuine respect-empathy-compassion.

Reminding at this point that mating package is romance + sexual desire.

Now, mating package originates out of our animal side. Because one does not have control over it. In ordinary cases when one stops liking someone one can say to oneself: "Okay, that's enough. I can't respect, empathize, feel compassion for this person anymore for so and so reason". One is done. But in case where mating package is active, that is not possible. In the former, the love is originating out of the "autonomous" part of the person, while in the latter, the illusion-love is originating out of the heteronomous part of the person. Heteronomous part is the same in us as in other animals which are more-or-less fully heteronomous. Hence, anything happening due to mating package pertains to animal nature. The genuine love, which is respect-empathy-compassion comes out of the autonomous, human part of us.

I am not talking about disowning the animal part of us. It's as much a part of us as the human part, and has to be entertained for a wholesome experience. But since the animal part is heteronomous (hence quasi-voluntary) and is governed by the universe, and human part is autonomous, there are often conflicts of goals between the two. So, in the event of conflict, if one knows what belongs to which part, then only one can make a right decision of choosing one's human goals, instead of tilting towards the universe's goals and bruise the human within. Universe is barbarous. Autonomy is the hallmark of being human. That part of one's behavior on which one doesn't have autonomous control pertains to one's animal nature.

It should be clear that I am not against having a mature relationship with romantic love and sex. And no, I don't have romanticism attached to abstention! Here's what I am for: Enter into a relationship with perfect understanding of romantic love mechanism and the place and function of sex. Romantic love can't be bypassed, so it will develop. Enjoy it, but don't get carried away by it (as in don't develop unrealistic expectations following it). Also, of course, indulge in sex to the fullest, but be aware of what it is, so as to not give it undeserved status, which might cause tragedies. Example: If one thinks of sex as sacred union and things like that, then one can't bear it when one learns that one's partner sometimes fantasizes about others. Another example: if one considers sexual gratification as a sign of it being a "true love" then sexual dissatisfaction would induce one to break the relationship. I could give many tragic examples with different reasoning people hold with respect to sex and romance. The idea is to understand what is what, so that one knows what is really important. It is not sex and romance, but love i.e. respect-empathy-compassion that matters in the end.

Eudaimonia as the Purpose of Human Life

2011-12-06T08:08:00.000+05:30

I recently got introduced to Aristotle's idea of the purpose of human life, and it resembles very much my own view. It gave much clarity and refinement to my thoughts. According to Aristotle, Eudaimonia is the ultimate human goal. Eudaimonia is a Greek word meaning Happiness or human well-being. For this post I will stick to "happiness".

A few months back I wrote an article titled Happiness as the Goal of Life — Right or Wrong? in which I said that happiness should not be the purpose of life. It might seem that I am changing my mind on it now, but that's not the case. The reason is that the goal-happiness which I then said should not be the purpose of life is not the same happiness meant by Eudaimonia. So, let's understand what Eudaimonic happiness is (with my own thought inputs).

What is Eudaimonic happiness?

Eudaimonia means happiness. However, this happiness is not fun or pleasure, but the feeling of having lived a good life. At the end of one's life when one looks back on life and feels totally satisfied with the way one's life has been, that means one has had a happy life, or one is happy in Eudaimonic sense. It is more akin to contentment. In Eudaimonic sense, happiness is a long term project, and can't be attained by short term fun and pleasure alone. Most people mean happiness as fun and pleasure. When they are having fun they say they are happy. The happiness which should not be the goal of life is "fun and pleasure".

In the aforementioned article I also wrote: "Having a satisfactory life over a long period of time (not in moment to moment evaluation) is also generally called a happy life. In that sense if one means that the goal of life is to make a "happy life" then it's fine. But if the goal-happiness means every moment one has to pounce on what brings one the greatest pleasure, without any regard for anything or anyone else but oneself, that's a myopic and naïve approach to happiness."

A satisfactory life over a long period of time, is exactly what Eudaimonic happiness is.

Pleasure can be a bodily pleasure like sex, tasty food etc. Fun can be when you are partying with your friends, dancing with DJ and activities like that. According to the idea of Eudaimonia, when you are pursuing fun and pleasure, you are not necessarily pursuing happiness. That means when you are having fun or pleasure, you are not necessarily happy.

To understand this more clearly, Eudaimonia is the ultimate goal of life, and thus should be pursued as a final end. Whereas, all other activities, including fun and pleasure, should be pursued as means to the end which is Eudaimonia. Meaning, fun and pleasure are not to be pursued as ends in themselves, for their own sake; they are to be pursued because and to the extent they contribute towards the goal of "good life". Fun and pleasure do not always contribute towards Eudaimonic happiness, and that's where it becomes imperative to take a closer look.

Fun and pleasure, and Eudaimonic happiness

You must have heard some simpletons say it with certain air of superiority: "My philosophy of life is simple. Have fun! If you're having fun doing something, it's right." Really?

A simple example suffices to debunk this feel-good, myopic idea. Smoking is fun. So, going by the principle of this philosophy one should smoke. Now think, in long term would one be better off if one smokes a lot, and thereby has a lot of fun, or if one doesn't smoke? Not difficult to answer. One is better off by not smoking. That means a rational-intelligent person would not have short term fun of smoking, and will thus have a better life. And better life is a happy life in Eudaimonic sense. We saw how the have-fun philosophy is faulty in principle.

The idea is this: Having fun and pleasure is not wrong, but it is only right to the extent it contributes to the goal of Eudaimonic happiness. Those fun and pleasurable activities that don't contribute towards making a good life are not to be pursued. The example I gave reaffirms the statement that fun and pleasure are not to be pursued as ends in themselves, but as (and to the extent they are) means to the end which is Eudaimonia.

How to achieve Eudaimonic happiness?

Now we know what Eudaimonic happiness is and why it should be the ultimate purpose of human life. The next big question is how to go about it. What are the things and activities that actually contribute towards the Eudaimonic happiness?

Revisit the smoking example I gave above. We saw that a rational-intelligent person would make a good life by not having short term fun of smoking. What did he do, in principle, to achieve Eudaimonia? By using his reason and analytic capacity he evaluated the quality of fun from smoking vis-à-vis the desirability of overall good life. Instead of being directed by his base nature (desire for fun) alone, he made use of his intellect.

Fun and pleasure appeal to our base nature. An animal would not feel dissatisfied in life by indulging only in bodily pleasures, because that's its nature. Human beings have that animal nature too; but in addition to that, humans also have much higher and sophisticated capacities like thinking and reasoning. Therefore, just by indulging their base nature (having fun and pleasure) human beings can't be fully happy and satisfied. Because that way they would not have a full human experience.

That clears the cloud. Those activities which are done making full use of human capacities provide the most gratifying human experience. It does not say that acting out of base nature is wrong per se, but such acts should be rationally analysed to see whether they are in accord with the long term purpose of good life.

Let's test this idea with examples. We take two extreme activities, respectively, involving acting on base nature, and acting against base nature, i.e. using rationality.

First activity is sex. Imagine you having sex with many attractive people and it's extremely pleasurable. Since sex has no use of reasoning capacity at all, you are totally acting out of your base nature. The second activity is sharing your meal with a hungry poor person. By sharing your meal (let's assume it is delicious too) you would be having less of bodily pleasure. You may even not fully gratify your own hunger. But the reasoning mind would tell that feeding the hungry poor is worthwhile because perhaps he needs food more. Now, when the years have passed and you are looking back on your life which of those two activities will make you feel good about the life you have lived? The answer, I hope, is not difficult. One doesn't think of orgasms one has had in life and feels good about life. Instead, one remembers the good and virtuous deeds one has done and feels that one's life has been good and worthwhile. Those are the things that make one take pride in oneself.

Enter virtue. Virtue is a central idea of the concept of Eudaimonic happiness. Since virtue is essentially human construct, it can only be cultivated using our human capacities – reason and intellect. In the original Aristotelian concept the term "virtue" is broadly covered (for which you may follow this piece) but for this post I am limiting its expounding.

If being virtuous means having less fun, then the purpose of life must not be having fun. That is so, precisely because Eudamonia is a function of virtue, not of fun. Virtue does not preclude fun, but it's not centered around it. Virtuous life is a way to Eudaimonia.

Finally, I would say if there is anything like true happiness or perfect happiness, it is Eudaimonia.

3 Different Types of Love, Lowest to Highest

2011-12-05T07:06:00.001+05:30

The word "love" is used to refer to more than one kind of feeling, and often those feelings are so vastly different from one another that denoting them by the same word and not making a mess isn't possible. In this post I am going to classify love in three types, from lowest to highest.

The first and the lowest form of love is Romantic Love. Second is Conditional Liking-love. And the third and the highest form of love is Unconditional Love. However, these terms are not self-explanatory. Especially, a lot of misunderstanding and irrationality are associated with the first and the third type. Let's clear the cloud.

1. Romantic Love

Romantic love is the lowest form of love. In fact, it should be saved of being called "love", even. Romantic love is at best an illusion of love. In truth, romantic love is Nature's mechanism of enabling mating and reproduction in humans. It's a mating drive. That's the reason it comes packaged with sexual desire. Romantic love needs sex for its expression. Without sex, romantic love can't last long. Interestingly, even with sex, romantic passion has to wane after a while. The duration may differ from case to case, but the euphoric feeling and the passion has a sure expiry date. Impermanence is in the nature of romance, it being there for a definite purpose of Nature.

Apart from that, romantic love is out-and-out irrational. There's no involvement of reason in romantic love. One who is "in love" with someone hasn't even chosen to be in love with that person for the qualities one admires. It's just that when one's brain gets images of people of the opposite sex, through one's social contact with them, it picks a person and the brain-chemicals create the feelings. Quite often, the person of fixation doesn't possess the qualities one likes, and/or even possesses qualities one strongly dislikes; still one feels love for that person. That shows how irrational it can be. Since there's no involvement of human reason in romantic love, it is fraught with dangers. No wonder it's invariably accompanied with intense pain and suffering.

Romantic love can only be between opposite sexes (exception: gays), and it can't be unconditional.

The mechanism of romantic love is great with regards to Nature's goal of propagation of species, but for humans who are unaware of the real mechanism, romantic love is a joke being played with them! More about romantic love.

2. Conditional Liking

If romantic love is a bad type of love, this one would be a good type. When one likes someone "very much" one says one loves that person. Simple as that. It's a liking beyond limit, hence love. It's a good type in that there's reasonable basis for love. One really likes some qualities in the object, that's why one loves the object. So, as long as the object possesses those qualities the liking would remain. There is an involvement of reason in it.

Unlike romantic love, this love is not limited to a male-female setting. One may like anyone irrespective of gender. It's like a friendship. And not only persons, one may even like certain animals and things very much and say one loves them. It's literally meant as love.

This liking-love is also conditional because the liking is conditional to the object being in possession of the likable qualities. One carries around a flower when it smells good; when the fragrance is gone, one doesn't care about the flower anymore; in any case not as much. Still, this love is better and much more practical than romantic love in which one don't even have control over who to feel for.

This love can not provide euphoric experience like romance does, but in essence it's far superior. The euphoria of romantic love, in my view, is a dis-ease (not disease) of the mind, as it's technically the same thing one feels by taking drugs! (Really, the same chemicals in the brain produce euphoria in romantic love that work when one takes certain drugs.) So, this liking-love is an ideal basis for marriage and long-term man-woman relationships; in contrast to relationships based purely on romance which are prone to collapse, or at least become bland.

3. Unconditional Love

If liking something for likable qualities is conditional love then what could be unconditional love? You guessed it right. When you like without any consideration. But how is that possible?

Unconditional love can not be directed to any particular person or object. The moment it is, it ceases to be unconditional. If you say you like person X unconditionally, that is a contradiction in terms! If it is unconditional then how come you like person X and not, say, person Y? That must mean there is something with the person you like, and so the liking is conditional to that something.

Unconditional love can only be directed towards the whole world at the same time. As such, it just means absence of hatred and infinite compassion towards the world. The world is mean to you, but you don't complain, then that must mean you love the world and the life too much to complain about petty things. Being wise and virtuous are the prerequisites of having the ability to love the world unconditionally.

Note again, that unconditional love can't have anything to do with what one feels towards a particular person or object. Many people use it in context of romantic love, which is just so pathetic an idea that I don't have words to describe the lameness of it.

Unconditional love is the highest form of love. However, it's more like an ideal to be held. One must not fret too much if one isn't able to hold up to it always. It's humanly not possible to always be without hetred. But that we can't be perfect shouldn't be an excuse to not try to overcome our flaws. That way, it's a good ideal to aim for in life.

Additional note:

The three forms of love described above are not necessarily exclusive of one another. One can possess all three of them at the same time. For example, when man and woman are in a relationship based on reason based liking, that doesn't mean they won't feel romantic love. Romantic love will naturally happen; as such it can't be bypassed. Also, they may be at the same time compassionate and hatred-free towards the rest of the world. That way, all three types of love can be present at the same time. But knowing what is what helps in understanding the relative importance of feelings and keeps our functioning smooth.

To summarize:

Hormones-induced romantic love is the lowest form of love; irrational, and just meant for mating. Then there's this love as in "liking something very much"; it's a reason based love; good to go with. And the highest form of love is the unconditional love (also called selfless love), which just means total absence of hatred and infinite compassion; it doesn't ask anything, anything at all.

A Case for Free Will (With Help of Descartes)

2011-12-04T08:21:00.000+05:30

Quite often I hear the argument of determinism being used to justify one's inadequacies. On a philosophical level when you are having discussion the use of determinism that way as a trump card is exasperating. It makes any discussion pointless! I am not refuting determinism, but I don't think it should have any bearing whatsoever on how we choose to live our lives; on our decision-making.

In this post I am making a case for free will. I am going to explain why it is right to believe (or acknowledge) that we have free will, and own the fact. Note that I am fully aware of determinism and its implications. I am making this case for a reason and with certain good logic.

A Case for Free Will (With help of Descartes)

If you say that we don't have free you essentially mean that we don't exist (or we are but illusions). So, I will shoot you and you should not have any problem with that, because for you neither you nor I even exist, right?

Think about it. Descartes famously said: "I think, therefore I am." If you are thinking, that must mean you (the thinker) exists. Now, are you thinking with your free will? Because if you are not thinking with your free will, then the thinking is just happening (you are not thinking), in which case you can't say you exist. So, either you exist, and have free will; or you don't, in which case the question of free will doesn't even arise.

When you say "I" am doing this, "I" am doing that, that means you see yourself as a distinct self-identity, related to others and thus a part of the environment, but not a passive one. Heteronomous animals can be called passive agents in that even though they act, they are not aware of acting as a distinct ego-identity. "I" has an ability to see itself as distinct from the rest of the physical world and act thus. That means "I" is autonomous.

One might say that "I" itself is an illusion! I would say that's ineffective case, in that to say something is illusion, one must provide what is real. If we, as we exist, are illusions, then in what form would we have been real? No answer. This is the only way we exist, hence we must exist. This is the only way we could have an "I", so we must have an "I". And since "I" has the aforementioned ability, it must be autonomous, that is, with free will.

Strictly going by determinism, there can be no active agents in the universe. Everything is passive. Anything that is moving is because of causal chain, as an effect of prior agent(s)'s movements. Is that a reason enough to say that nothing is active? Do the adjectives passive and active even apply at that level? If one says that we are passive agents, could one tell in what way we would have been active agents?

At the level of elementary particles (or even prior level to that) everything is passive, and we are also essentially made of those particles only. But – and importantly – "I", a distinct self-identity which we are, doesn't exist at that level. "I" exists at the level of consciousness. So, whatever is said with respect to "I" (whether we have free will), must follow from the level where "I" comes into existence, not from some prior point. If one agrees that "I" exists, through whatever processes and dynamics, it is autonomous by virtue of being able to see itself as distinct from the physical world and act thus. And that itself is a reason to believe we are "active".

A friend argues: Imagine that computer AI becomes advanced enough to produce consciousness. Will it mean that computers are suddenly "active" agents when we can trace every single element of their decision making?

I would say, if we can trace every single element of their decision making, then they are not active for us, but they may be autonomous for and in themselves! In this sense, we could say that we may be passive in the eyes of some ghost existing outside of the physical world who can trace all our decisions, but we ourselves can never exist in that "mystical form" to be able to judge ourselves thus. How do we even know that such mystical form exists? And without evidence, what reason do we have to build anything on it?

This also explains about the dream argument. The dream argument says that in our dreams we act freely, but still we know it's not real. So, how do we know that right now we are real and not in a dream? And if we are not even real, free will too must be an illusion. To this, my point would be: The dream is not real for us precisely because (and when) we exist outside of dream and judge it thus. If dream was the only place we could exist, then we have no grounds to call it unreal, because we wouldn't even know what's real! And that's exactly the case with us.

Yes, we are a result of natural processes, and our brain is constrained by the laws of physics and everything, and thus it's decision making process is determined by myriad factors. But how could it be otherwise? How could your decisions be not affected by any factors, when you yourself are a result of those factors? Do you, again, say you don't exist because you are a result of the interplay of other elements? In what other form, then, you think you could have existed for real?

To summarize:

We couldn't exist outside of the physical world. (That's even contradiction in terms.) We don't even have good reason to believe that something could exist in that mystical form to be able to judge us as passive agents! (That would be same as believing in God.)
If being governed by physical laws means passivity then everything is passive, in which case to call it "passive" itself doesn't make sense because we don't know what "active" would be like.
We do apply the dual notions such as active-passive, because we exist and operate only at a post-consciousness level, and with "I".
Since "I" is autonomous, we have free will.

Unless we can tell what being "active" would be like, we can't say that we are passive. Yes, by thought experiment we can jump into some mystical form of existence and thence we look at us and say that we are passive. But no one could exist in that form. That form is only inside our minds. It's very much like the idea of God. By thought experiments we can think and say anything! But to seriously build on it is the same as building on the God hypothesis.

Postscript:

Actually, determinism is circular. We can say that we if had enough data and computing power, we could predict our own future actions. But then we can also say that whether to do so or not still depends on our free will. Determinism, however, includes that decision-making process too!

It depends from which level we are looking at things. In a way both positions are right. (That's why life is absurd.) I am only striving for free will because since we could pick any of the two positions and both are right, why not pick the one which makes life meaningful and which is relevant to our living as conscious beings, rather then that which is irrelevant if one wants to live.

Awareness of determinism is one thing. However, to base one's decision making (or a lack of it) on the notion that we don't have free will is, in my view, insane!

This piece validates my attempts to defend "free will" —
Scientists say free will probably doesn’t exist, but urge: “Don’t stop believing!”
(Alternative link)

4 Stages of Ideal Life

2011-12-03T09:09:00.001+05:30

Assuming that life starts at five, here are 4 stages of life, grouped by age, which I think describe an ideal kind of life.

5-15, Innocence

This age is childhood. Characterized by playfulness, innocence, curiosity, basic education, and a lot of initial conditioning. One is not concerned about the big issues of life. Childhood is a dreamland.

15-25, Foolishness

One has reached puberty by this age. Once that’s happened, childhood begins to cease, as one gets a whole new set of emotions to feel, and one’s motivations of life take a big shift. It’s exciting, but at the same time fraught with dangers. Ignorance of childhood and vigor of approaching adulthood (marked by arousal of powerful sexual forces) has a tendency to give rise to a lot of stupid behavior. One goes through rapid changes of character in this age.

The changes are bitter-sweet. This is the age in which one also becomes face-to-face with the reality of life. Sex, romance, relationships, breakups, heartbreaks, jealousy, greed, self-destructive thoughts and actions… Blaming society, God, and life itself for its unfairness and cruelty… Career, money, future plans, and dreams. The focus is on fun, pleasure, enjoyment, narcissistic wishes.

There’s so much happening, but one doesn’t usually have enough understanding of life. There are frequent periods of euphoria and extreme sadness. This is the most hectic time of life, and ideally I would say it’s better if one goes through all sorts of experiences of life in this age. I have called it “age of foolishness” in the sense that one’s character is not solidly shaped yet. One’s thoughts and actions are not always reconciled. It’s not possible to feel at ease and contented in life with such state of mind and affairs. But it’s a necessary turmoil, and ideally, it should help one become sorted on what life really is and what is really important to do in life.

25-35, Cultivation of Wisdom

Although I think most people (yes, most people) never make it beyond the age of foolishness, an ideal life is when one understands life quite well. Having seen and felt enough of life in the age of foolishness to shape one’s worldview and define one’s character, this is now high time for perfecting the both – worldview and character.

Learning and understanding about life, human nature, politics, how societies and everything in it works etc should now be the primary focus of life. (No, it doesn’t require one to be jobless, but just observant and reflective.) Understanding the human condition is a key to most worthwhile, rewarding and fulfilling life. The only truly happy man is a wise man; otherwise a drunkard is also happier than the average.

35-beyond, Contribution to Goodness

Worthwhile living is when one adds value to the world. After understanding life, and having cultivated wisdom, it’s time to create something out of it. One may write a book, become a public speaker, or teacher, or politician; or at the least a good example of an ideal and virtuous life holder for the people that surround one. The idea is to influence minds and to change lives for better. To do something great with all the knowledge and understanding one has attained in life. It’s not an obligation, but a wise man would know that it’s a key to most fulfilling life.

These are the four stages of an ideal life. They are not strictly age-bound. A lot depends on what kind of surrounding one grows up in, and what conditioning one is given. For example, to the people in a free and developed country like US a lot of things happen very early in their life – like losing virginity – compared to the people in a relatively conservative country like India. But an ideal life is one which contains roughly all four of the stages described above.

Blackhole Effect: Why You Can't Choose Occupation You Love

2011-11-15T08:57:00.000+05:30

In discussion with a friend over something (unrelated to the matter of this post) I mentioned this:

The corporate employees in this society aren't doing the work because they love it or have a personal intention of doing something meaningful for the society through their work. For most people today, the motivation behind their job is not the passion and love for it, but necessity. Most corporate employees hate their workplaces.

To which his reply was:

It is exactly this species that make the world an evil place that we think it is. And they have fooled themselves into believing that there is no way out of it. They can't find the work they love and are not willing to work hard to create an ecosystem for themselves to do what they love.

That made me think about the issue, and subsequently I came up with an explanation of why it is not easy to do what one loves. For now I have named this phenomenon Blackhole effect. Explaining it below in a simple way.

Blackhole effect (Economics): The theory of why one can't choose occupation one loves

Suppose that the world is simple. Giant corporations are not around; and hence, all the industries existing are of a very moderate size. People freely choose from the ways of making a living.

Then someone makes a product which has a huge selling potential. This person who made the product is passionate about making such products. As this product has a huge selling potential he thinks of opening a factory and employ many people in the production of the product. And because the profits are going to be huge, he offers way better returns to the people who would be employed with him. So, people who are not particularly interested in that kind of work feel attracted to join the production factory. It's simple, if you go on raising the wage, the supply of workers increases. So, these first bunch of people chucked their respective loved occupations and joined into production of the newly invented product with huge selling potential. They did so out of the natural desire to have a better life. (Or because of allure of social status, because the factory is promising them the highest income possible in that society which will make them rich and thus socially powerful.)

The time passes. Now people working in this factory are earning more than the rest. The aggregate demand in the economy increases, because people have more money to spend. Supply being relatively inelastic, it drives up the prices, needless to mention, for all. (When demand increases and supply can't, prices go up.) While these people with higher income can afford goods with higher prices, the high prices affect negatively the lives of the people who have not joined the production factory. To maintain their level of consumption, they need more income. So some of them decide to chuck their loved occupation and join the production factory.

At this stage, what I called Blackhole effect is starting to emerge. The (production) factory here, is like a blackhole which will suck people into it compellingly. Moreover, as more people join it, it will become more powerful (by raising the income of more people, and thereby having bigger impact on prices) to suck even more people into it. For a particular "blackhole" (industry) there may be a limit at certain point as to how many people it can employ, but when there are number of blackholes in the economy, the effect does have consequences to the extent that is hard to ignore.

Today almost everyone decides which field to choose based on where the income is more. Then obvious advice like "do what you love" passes for wisdom. People even fool themselves to believe that this is what they love, when actually they love it only because they see it will give them the highest return. And by joining the industry they don't actually love, they further exacerbate the situation for all. But what can they do? If in a town of, say, 100 people, 50 are employed in one industry (or a set of industries, or blackholes) which is paying the highest, then they will definitely have an impact on general price level, and to match the income others will naturally be drawn to the same industry (get sucked into those blackholes). That's one of the reasons why work today is something most people do out of necessity and not out of love for that work.

Some people, of course, can succeed in pulling off the career of their choice; but when one tries that the system subjects one to hardships (when that career is apart from the blackholes) which may not be bearable for all. And it's no one's fault, actually. It's the nature of economy.

Where there's economy, individuals can't have much choice of what occupation to have. Well, and economy can't not be. The problem is the existence of industries which grow large enough to assume the nature of a blackhole. And when GDP is the goal, it's natural that those blackholes would be seen as a blessing. But are they? GDP and the real wellbeing are quite often the goals of conflicting nature.

(I will refine the theory by adding psychological underpinnings of Blackhole effect in some future post.)

Radical Honesty, and When Lying Is Good

2011-11-13T16:32:00.001+05:30

Question: How would the world look like if people would only tell their true thoughts to one another?

Answer: The world would fall apart.

Our world is not designed to function with radical honesty. Lies are essential to keep the world from falling apart.

That doesn't mean I favor dishonest people, or don't consider honesty a virtue. But the fact is that humans do operate with double-standards; and that's the way is it should be left to operate. The reason for this is that humans have two conflicting forces driving them: 1) Reason/intellect, and 2) emotions/impulses. Radical honesty means acting totally out of the first; which is only possible in theory.

If your girlfriend asks you whether you find her friend sexy, or whether you ever fantasize about someone else, and you don't lie if you really do and expect your girlfriend to be "rational" enough to accept this, you are being naïve. Your girlfriend will rather choose a liar. Because humans are not mature enough to deal with certain emotional pangs; and there's evolutionary reasons why irrationality is so powerful within us. Romantic love, for example, is totally irrational from human perspective, but it's so powerful, because it's a mating drive, which has evolutionary significance.

Dishonesty will never become a virtue; dishonest people will always find reproach. But at the same time there will also always be dilemmas and dishonesty will be chosen over honesty, and that's alright if one understands the way of the world.

People will never tell that they prefer to hear a lie. It is implicit in the cases where truth is not conducive to a wholesome emotional experience. Romantic love is a classic example of it. And there can be many instances/experiences in life in which if one minutely scrutinizes oneself, it's hard to not notice how much of a liar one is. It happens intuitively, because our biology knows the optimal survival strategies better than our intellect.

If radical honesty is not in wide currency, that's because natural selection (evolution) would eliminate a radically honest person. If it was viable to be radically honest then we would see at least one such person in the world; especially, after centuries of teaching "honestly is the best policy" and things like that. Maybe because radically honest people, if at all there have been any, have not succeeded in passing on their genes! Radical honesty doesn't pay for long.

Corollary is: lying to an extent is not a bad at all.

Ineffective argument for Radical Honesty

Some people argue that children are always honest. They don't deceive others because they are not afraid of the consequences. They say what they feel. And that's a good quality. We all like children for that. And that's actually something adults should learn from children.

This argument is not just ineffective, but fallacious. Children do a lot of things that when an adult does, he/she becomes insufferable. That same candor which is so charming in young children is considered rude and tactless in adults. Reason: The dynamics underlying the adult life is different from that of the infancy, and consequently an adult must behave differently than an infant for the same level of wellbeing and security.

Is Internet (esp Social Networks) Isolating People?

2011-11-08T10:04:00.000+05:30

I am positive that the Internet (especially the socializing part of it) is isolating people. It's paradoxical, because today social networking websites like Facebook etc not only get unknown people closer by giving them a scope to know each other, but also help people reunite with their long lost friends and acquaintances. But I believe in essence it isolates people, in that the time one would have been spending with one's family and/or close friends in physical proximity would be much more fulfilling than the time one spends with unknown people and far away friends/relations over the Internet.

There are several reasons for that:

1) Convenience and longevity of online relations is less. Thus the scope for creating a meaningful and lasting experience is very limited, for that requires time and convenience.

2) Everyone interacts with countless people online, so the share of attention and emotional connection everyone gets from everyone else is naturally going to be relatively less. That's another reason for not getting a sense of fulfillment even when one is regularly interacting with so many people every day over social networking websites. Seeing someone engaged with you one moment and with others the next (and over totally different subjects) is not conducive to the same emotional fulfillment from the engagement that comes when spending time with someone in person.

3) Playing a game of cricket for real, or going for a movie with a few close friends can be a memorable experience. Doing things online with online friends can not. Life comprises of so many little details which collectively make grand memories when the years have passed. The virtual world is too limited to capture, or even allow those little, subtle things to take place. Having a virtual friendship is analogous to exploring the streets of Paris on Google Earth's Street View. A person who spends several hrs a day socializing on the Internet needs to really get a life.

4) A lot of people online are plain pretenses. You never know when they will desert you, because you don't know them at all. Engaging with them is mostly a waste of time and energy – unless one has a worthwhile motive like learning something, or discussion or debate kind of engagement. If one is looking for the joy of human relationships, one should preferably look around in the real world, not on the Internet.

5) I also think that, just like in things, having too many choices in friends/people makes the relations with them fickle. It degrades the quality of every experience, because there's always someone better, someone more interesting around the corner and within reach. And that's true for everyone. When the choices are abundant no one gets the real thing (which is "meaningful and lasing" relation) because everyone is greedy and looking for more. Yes, you can have hundreds of superficial friends and delude yourself of enjoying those friendships.

Hence, quantitatively it brings people together; but speaking in terms of quality and essence, it's isolating people.

The often repeated argument is that if there was no Internet, we could never have found our childhood friends back, and never have had opportunities to meet interesting people that we do. So, this progress is good and has made life better. Well, it's a fallacy of thought. Once we are accustomed to something, imagining life without it is naturally going to seem less comfortable. We can't imagine life without cellphones today. But we can't deny it that when cellphones weren't around we were just as happy as we are today. Same is with everything. In fact, being connected with childhood friends all life erodes the pleasure of missing them. Occasional letters received from a relation gave us more happiness than the emails and DMs we receive so frequently now. Seeing people and interacting with them too frequently results in loss of value of those people. Upon close look one must see that it makes life flat and bland.

There are many subtle pleasures of life the "new world" is robbing people of without we even realizing it, because we are too blinded by the glare of fast paced developments and too excited to stop and evaluate how it all is affecting the quality of our lives.

What Is Worthwhile Living?

2011-11-05T16:00:00.000+05:30

A simple definition of worthwhile living is: Living how you would like others to live.

That living which would make the world better is worthwhile living. We measure the betterment of the world in terms of human wellbeing. So, that living which increases human wellbeing is worthwhile living. Since it is very difficult to run measurements of what would or would not contribute to the collective wellbeing it is good to think of simply as "how we would like others to live".

Do you get angry when someone asks bribe? Then not taking bribe is worthwhile living. You don't like it when someone breaks a traffic rule and overtakes your vehicle in an unfair way, right? Then observing traffic rules and being fair is worthwhile living. How will you feel if your wife cheated on you? You know that. Then not cheating on one's spouse is worthwhile living. Simple as that.

Worthwhile living is not the easiest way to live. One has to be altruistic to live a worthwhile life. Being altruistic involves forgoing one's own interests for the collective good of people.

But that, in the long run, benefits one in the form of high-quality happiness. (There's no guarantee though; and that shouldn't even be the focus of worthwhile living.) Isn't it a selfish bargain then? – one might ask. Well, yes. Everyone is selfish. But noble is he whose selfish interests are aligned with good interests of something greater than himself — like family, community, nation,... So, while selfishness, taken in a strict sense, is always present; it is not at odds with worthwhile living.

Giving collective wellbeing preference over one's own immediate wellbeing and calling it worthwhile living may sound counterintuitive to some people. Besides, on philosophical grounds also one might ask for the basis of such a conclusion, when the universe clearly doesn't have moral absolutes or externally imposed "moral oughts". It's a fair doubt, but can be explained away reasonably. We are interdependent agents in the world. It's true that humans have their own ego-identity, unlike other animals, so their primary focus tends to be on one's own self, but we do need other people to be happy and thrive. If we lived only self-indulgently we can not be happy for long because such living would naturally be followed by alienation. That's the reason sacrificial living is given so much importance in religious and traditional wisdom. Living sacrificial life without understanding this isn't advisable for happiness though, but if one understands life well, it's easy to see why being useful and valuable to the society (which is meant by enabling collective wellbeing) is called worthwhile living.

One's aim should be to live a worthwhile and virtuous life. And the reward may be a high-quality happiness, which comes as a by-product of making the best of life by doing worthwhile things — like being good and useful (to others).

Difference Between Knowing and Understanding

2011-11-02T15:34:00.000+05:30

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it. — Charles F. Kettering

Knowledge may come by asking 'what' and 'how'. Understanding usually comes by asking 'why'. That's why I believe before going on to 'what' and 'how', one should always ask 'why'. If one gets its answer right then there's little room for failure. There is a difference between knowing something and understanding it.

The Difference

Understanding is not exclusive of knowing, of course, but knowing doesn't necessarily mean understanding.

While you know something by observation, reading and hearing about it, understanding essentially happens with deep inquiry and contemplation (along with observation, reading, hearing etc) about it ending up with "eureka" of realization. This last, realization stage is the essential part of the process of understanding.

Knowledge is superficial if not gained through understanding, or not followed by the aforementioned process of understanding. The real essence is understanding, and it has to come from within oneself. Knowledge is always external. It becomes one's own only when it is understood. Knowledge without understanding doesn't help as much, especially in difficult situations. For instance, by reading self-help literature, philosophy etc, one can get knowledge, but it seldom makes a substantial difference, because seldom does one go through the process of understanding which the original author has. Even if what one observes, reads or hears makes sense on the surface, unless and until one goes through and completes the process of understanding one hasn't really grasped it wholly.

Most people think they possess the understanding of something, when actually they only know it. And that knowledge they have picked from other people. They have observed/read/heard those things so many times that it has created an illusion of having understood those things; and hence, they are never ever questioned or contemplated. Problems, however, are faced in difficult situations. Because knowledge is after all just knowledge. Without understanding in life, man is lost.

Coping With Meaninglessness and Lack of Free Will

2011-10-28T21:23:00.001+05:30

Came across a very interesting discussion on Reddit. Reposting selected excerpts from it below. (Follow the full discussion.)

Question:

I'm having a horrible existential crisis. If you believe life has no inherent meaning, and that determinism is true, how do you muster the drive to do something with your life?

(Gives more information)

I'm at a point where I feel like I can't do or think anything, because I can't trust that anything is true or meaningful. I can't trust my own thoughts, and that's extremely frustrating and paralyzing.

The kind of thinking I outlined above led me to depression, apathy, and to drop out of college overseas and move back home. At that time, I convinced myself that there were a few things that I had to take care of (school, job, money, dealing with parents), and that I didn't have time for deep thinking, so I would keep my thinking quick and intuitive for the time being. I was happier, more focused, and had more direction in my life.

But, I was not against deep thinking completely. I feel like it should be useful for figuring out things wrong with one's life, things one wants to change, and for living more rationally. I decided to go back to it after I got my life under control, and it just threw me off. Shattered all the assumptions and structure that I had built.

The idea "that nothing can be known with certainty" really seems to be the issue for me. How does one trust their thoughts and intuition? The problem I'm having is, that when I choose a goal, or any sort of structure, guideline, or assumption for my life, I can't act on it, because I don't know that it's what's best. I have this desperate need to "figure it all out", before moving on with my life. How does one feel good and positive about their life, when they know that their own knowledge and experience is so limited? How do they trust that their living a good life?

As for not being able to trust my thoughts. If I don't believe in any objective reference that can guide my thoughts, and if I believe that I don't control my thoughts, then my thoughts become stripped of any value or meaning for me.

Telling myself that I should just accept this or that, or not think, seems similar to the blind faith involved in religion, which we hear so much criticism about. Although, my understanding is that everyone has to take faith at some level, make at least some assumption(s) to guide the way they live their life. But I can't seem to feel good about or trust any assumptions I make.

The only conclusion I can seem to make, is that I should stop thinking and just live my life. But that seems so counter-intuitive, especially since it is thinking itself that has led me to make this conclusion that I feel will greatly improve my life.

Some of the very apt responses:

Zeno of Citium said you should imagine yourself as a dog tied to a wagon. Even if you have free will, your options are very much constrained by accidents of birth and fortune – a kid who grows up illiterate won't become an astrophysicist or great poet, for example. Zeno's answer is that it's best to accept your fate and run with the cart rather than be dragged. You will still have plenty of opportunities to test how much slack there is in that rope.

In either case (determinism or free will) the real matter at hand is taking notice of what you can control and what you can't control and to not worry about the latter. Once you've resigned yourself to that, you'll be amazed at how things come into focus.

--

Doing fun stuff is fun.

There we go, determinism isn't a thought about how we live our lives, but rather why we live them. If you are a determinist and by some supernatural proof you have seen your life is supposed to be pointless, well then you're out of luck. But determinism doesn't mean your life doesn't have purpose, it just means every action you make is a reaction to something that has already happened. The problem with assuming your life doesn't have purpose is that there must have been some illogical statements to the logical conclusion you came to, such as using logic for no reason except to use logic. Nietzsche even said that the third realization of Nihilism is that you must find a reason to life outside of this world, the logical one. So the statement above (doing fun stuff is fun) is honestly the best way to live your life. But also realizing that in order to have the most amount of fun, you must sometimes do non-fun things. You must do your work so you can get paid. You must compliment the lady so you can have sex. You must pump iron if you want big muscles. That's just the problem of life.

--

If you're looking for some logical or rational reason, you're out of luck I'm afraid.

The good news is that humans have evolved to have the ability to cognitively dissociate from facts like these, and have systems like dopamine in the brain that make you feel good when you do certain things. The key is engaging those systems in a sustainable way.

I'm really struggling right now to do just that, actually. Things like helping other people and having fulfilling relationships seem really important in achieving the cognitive dissonance required for a happy life. Alcohol and other substances to artificially increase happiness (via dopamine production, etc.) do not work, as the brain has a tolerance mechanism that makes those solutions short-term only.

--

Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel its worth living?

Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism – and their assumption of immortality.

As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life's élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).

Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

--

Thinking is like any other skill that needs to be mastered. You should learn when to use it, and when to shut it up, especially when it starts interfering or precluding first-hand experiences. As any human being, you also sense reality with another dimensions of yourself: your feelings, your intuition, your beliefs, your empathy, your life experience, your aims, your passion, and so on.

For any meaningful advancement regarding any existential concern, thinking is not a cause, it is an effect. An alternate method to gain knowledge is to place a question like a farmer places a seed, and covers it with soil. Let your concern sink deeply into yourself and leave it there for a time, untouched; do not dig it up time and again with the hectic doubt of your always wandering intellect. Give it time and continue learning, and experiencing your life fully; sooner than later, in the silence of the self, a ripe answer will gradually emerge. From that moment on, you are ready again to continue thinking, without getting stuck. You may now do this as many times as you need.

--

There is no meaning to life. There is no point in doing anything. This is true.

There is also no point in not doing anything. Just go do some stuff. You did stuff before you realized it was pointless. Why did you do them? Because you wanted to. They made you feel happy. You can still do those things.

Or if you want to be more cerebral about the whole thing, consider what would be best for you to do given the situation. Don't go all the way out to the context of the whole universe. Just your actual life. What do you want out of it. Then do that.

Meanwhile, determinism has nothing to do with any of this. "I can't trust my own thoughts." What? Why? Are you literally crazy? I accept determinism and meaninglessness. I trust my thoughts. I think they're pretty good thoughts.

Think about this: You've discovered determinism and it's consequences. What did you think was happening before and what is now different? Most people's concept of free-will is actually incoherent. It requires: choice based on you own composition that is effected by but not determined by outside forces. This is contradictory. It's contradictory because you are not in control of your own composition. You were born and you had no control over that, your starting point. Without (some) control over your starting composition everything must be determined by entirely outside forces. That's the only option.

A quick aside: there is also the option of "random chance." A lot of people like to bring in quantum mechanics and say you can't predict things so they're not determined. First, this is false, at human scales you can make near 100% accurate predictions. Second it's not any better. Making choices based on "random chance" isn't free will either.

So, in closing, you haven't lost anything. You've realized your concept of free will is contradictory. You never imagined that you had control over your own creation. That's the only thing that's different in your conceptions now. You still have free will in the sense that you base your decisions off of your own composition. It's just possible to know beforehand what your choice would be if you had perfect knowledge. Which should have been obvious already. If your choices aren't just random, someone who knew you perfectly should be able to predict what you'd do. Life is exactly the same.

--

I would agree with you. This is what i did, for now: I found a way to keep myself grounded. What happened to me is I started questioning what reality is and what stopped me from doing 'insane' things or just to commit suicide. My reasoning was, initially, that I could not because of my family and friends. (I would use that to initially keep grounded and not do something irrational). Then I decided why I would not commit those actions was because I simply did not want to. We're playing this absurd game in society but why not go with it as much as you decide you would like to, simply so you can derive whatever pleasure that you enjoy from it. I cannot disagree with you when you say nothing is meaningful, but that does not mean you do not have the option of enjoying the experience of existence. What would truly be scary is if you, in fact, lived for eternity. But you don't. You will die one day so go do things simply because you have the option to do them.

It can be safe to assume that you still derive pleasure from things, correct? Pursue them and avoid what discomforts you. Realize that there are things that you do not enjoy and try your best to make sure that your actions do not cause others to feel intense discomfort.

I would recommend reading Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. I am just about to get started on it, but I have heard good things about it.

Moreover some of these things helps calm me and find comfort —

1) This painting is called, 'where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?'

It is so beautiful and it illustrates perfectly what we humans wonder about. Find solace that you are not alone. There are fellow conglomerate molecules that are in this with you. Take comfort in that.

2) Go through all the tabs on the left of this page. There have been people far superior in intelligence than us in this same position. Find solace in that we are not alone in our understanding of the meaninglessness of it all.

3) Listen to this song: Empire Of The Sun - Walking On A Dream

As you listen, accept that it is meaningless but that does not mean it is not worth experiencing because, hey, it is going to end anyways. Just go with it. I love the lines about walking on a dream and how were just searching for the thrill of it.

What Is the Purpose of Human Life?

2011-10-20T22:30:00.000+05:30

Note that if the question was "What should be the purpose of human life?" then the answer would be quite different from what I am going to say in this post. But if asked what IS the purpose of life, then sadly...

There's no purpose behind life. We are habituated to think (and conditioned to believe) that everything has a purpose, a reason behind its occurrence. But that's not true. Nothing in the universe has any purpose behind it. There's no inherent meaning in the universe. Whatever meaning there is, it's the creation of human mind; strictly speaking, a delusion. It's another thing that humans can not live without meaning, and for that it's rather necessary to assign some purpose to life.

Say you throw a pebble into a pond. It produces ripples in the water. The poor ignorant fishes are now asking each other what is the purpose behind these ripples. They are wondering if these ripples have inherent meaning for them. But you know that these ripples mean nothing. They are a result of your whimsical random act of throwing a pebble into the pond. In doing so, you had no other motive but to merely throw a pebble. You didn't even intend to create those ripples. So the ripples, and anything else that might result out of your act of throwing a pebble, is an absolutely random consequence. It may scare some fish, or kill some, or tear some leaves off the water-plants, whatever may happen. And the fishes who observe it will find a reason, will assign a meaning to this occurrence. Because that's how their minds are habituated to function.

Our existence is just like those ripples. Our lives, are ripples. Random. Without any meaning, reason, or intention behind it. What's worse, we don't even know who or what has created these ripples, and how it all has started. All we can know – that is, if we choose to come out of our delusions and be truly honest to ourselves – is that we don't and we can't have a clue about these existential matters. That's just the way it is.

Feel-good Philosophies — Recipes for Dysfunction

2011-10-14T13:41:00.000+05:30

Recipe for dysfunction

I found this image on one social networking website. No wonder, it’s got millions of “likes” and “thumbs ups”. It contains such valuable advices!

Let’s dissect it into pieces and see how meaningful it is:

This is your life – Yes! This is MY LIFE!

Do what you love, and do it often – I LOVE playing video games. Yes, so I should do what “I” love. And do it as often as “I” like. After all this is MY LIFE.

If you don’t like something, change it – I don’t like my friends because they don’t understand me. Maybe I should change them. In fact, I don’t like anything that is not how “I” want it. Yes, I should definitely change things then. After all, this is MY LIFE; and it should be the way “I” want it. (I don’t like my parents, too.)

If you don’t like your job, quit it – Done! Yeah! I feel so POWERFUL!

If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV – But I have plenty of time now. Just quit my job. TV is alright for a while. And video game!

If you are looking for a love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love – Oh, really! Hah, wow! And priests say God loves you when you do things that HE wants you to do, and not the things YOU love. My parents also always told me the same thing. That people will love you when you behave how everyone likes you to be. What a bunch of losers they must be! This is MY LIFE! Yeah! I do what “I” love. Come, my people, love me!

Stop overanalyzing, life is simple – You said it! Life is SO simple. Just do what you love, and people will start loving you. Why bother about anything! Just do whatever YOU love!

All emotions are beautiful. When you eat, appreciate every last bite – Not sure what it means, but looks good. Yes, emotions are beautiful, sure.

Open your mind, arms and heart to new things and people. We are united in our differences – But I don’t like different people! They give me advices, and don’t let me do what “I” love and be myself. Yes, but I am always open for new things and people. But they should understand better.

Ask the next person you see what their passion is. And share your inspiring dream with them – Ok. But they are a bunch of idiots. No one wants to listen to meaningful things. Everyone wants to live their own dreams and passions. That’s fine. What do I care!

Travel often – But I quit my job. Yes, I had got another one. But you see, that was also bad, so quit that too. Running short of money now. Should I eat, or travel? Are you sure on this one?

Getting lost will help you find yourself – I still have to find myself? Yeah, they always say tough times only make you realize great truths. I feel so excited! I want to get lost. I am on such a grand path of self-discovery. Ah, I already feel like a protagonist of some great film with a great message for the humankind!

Some opportunities only come once. Seize them – You are not making sense, I’m afraid. What opportunities? What about the things I love doing? How am I to know when the opportunity comes? What if I don’t like it?

Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them. So go out and start creating – But I don’t like people! Didn’t you say I should do what “I” love?

Life is short – OH MY GOD! YES!

Live your dream and share your passion – Yes, “my” dreams, “my” passions! They are great! I am so great! I want to share my greatness, but no one wants it. Why is it so? What’s wrong with the world? No one is fucking interested in anyone else! What the heck! I am so confused! Life sucks!

***

Such claptrap is becoming increasingly popular in modern times, since traditional wisdom has become passé. God save people from these feel-good, but disastrous, philosophies!