Struggling with Meaninglessness

I feel dumb spending many hours writing this note down as a preparation for a workshop I’m going tomorrow. Do I really call this a ‘note’? It’s more like a science journal. And I’m just half way through writing it but I think I will just leave them hanging. Maybe I will complete the hanging part once I’m free.

Don’t think this will have much use for tomorrow ideation and marketing session, so I will just dump it here.

 Intelligence Growth model

First, we have to know that our brain does not stop developing until around late-20s. Basically, that’s the age where our maturity and intelligence will peak. However, puberty during teenage years is a condition which tell the body that we are now already in adult phase, hence creating a conflict – The body tells the brain that it is already an adult body and fully matured but the brain is still half-way developing! And this is the ultimate reason why teenagers are rebellious by nature and parenting is the most difficult at this period – it’s like an adult trapped in a teenagers’ mind.

Peer Pressure and Peer Influence

• Society often exert some kind of expectations and pressure to youths within the tribe.
  • For instance, if the aunty asks his nephew – “what are you working as right now?” and he answers – “I sell DVD on the roadside”, the impression on the boy would immediately drop. Aunty is not impressed. However if he is a professional worker like a doctor, engineer or lawyer, the aunty will go awe instead because those careers are traditionally perceived as successful. This is exactly the societal expectations and pressures I was referring to.
• Youths are aware of these expectations and pressures because recognition, reputation and acknowledgement are often seek, not only by youths, but as well as adults. It’s a human thing. However, as pointed out at intelligence maturity graph above, most youth are only at the growing stage of mental development. Don’t forget, youths are people with teenage’s mind trapped in adult’s body. Therefore, youths often have some kind of delusion that they have the capability to outdo and create achievements on par with adults. But the fact is, they don’t. A typical youth do not have the mental capacity to be on par with a typical adult because they are both at different mental growth stage. And many youths do not have any awareness of this mental growth stage. This is why youths are rebellious, a state where youths often disagree with their parents’ standpoint, perceiving them as old-fashioned and uncool because their parents often disagree with youth’s point of view. 
• Because youths are pressured to be ‘successful’, ‘contributive’, or ‘archiving’, but yet, not having the mental capacity to do it, youths have systematically adopt a very easy and efficient way to learn about things around them and the environment– Copying and Following. This method is so inherent and convenient that many has also brought it along to adulthood stage. In biological terms, it is called as memetics.
• Due to domino’s effect, youths do not restrict Copying and Following method to just learning and knowing only but also apply it to their lifestyle and preference of choices. Youths will follow the latest trends, hits, style, movements, etc.
• Let’s use the famous example – Barack Obama. We all know the fact that Obama is popular among youths. But do you know that many youths in America couldn’t actually tell difference of standpoint and philosophy between Democrats party and Republican party? They are totally not aware of it. But to youths, Obama is ‘cool’ because many of their peers support and like him. There’s a huge buzz going around him too and they were impressed with his inspiring speeches. And this created a huge number of followers of Obama among Youths even without knowing the policy of the political party he is belong to.  <hanging>

Why Identity is important to Youths?

• Seeking identity does not only apply to youths but actually to everybody.
• However adults can easily create an identity by associating themselves with their career, spouse, children, house, cars, financial power, reputation among business network and workplace, etc.
• Youths on the other hand, possess nothing big which allow them to create an identity for themselves. Hence, youths go for achievable and inexpensive things which could help mold their identity such as – fashion, gadgets, accessories, hangout places, and their preferences.
• Why do people seek identity? Because everyone has idealism in life. A sort of ideal perfection in love, career, financial, status, etc. Youths always have very optimistic fantasy of how life should be and how they are looked up to. But reality as we know is harsh and not as smooth as we expect. Hence when idealism and reality clash – it creates Uncertainty in youths.
• Adults have gone through the uncertainty stage and as they lower down their expectations in idealism as they age, the element of uncertainty slowly fades away. Youths on the other hand, is full of idealism on what they want to be and have. <hanging>

Do youths have their own standpoint?

• If peer influence is such a big thing, then why do youths care to be unique at the same time? It’s almost paradoxical. So, do youths get influenced by majority’s decision or do they want to be unique? The answer to the question is not clear cut, because psychologically, it is a struggle between herd mentality and individual uniqueness.
• The line between togetherness and uniqueness is drawn when it involves youth’s knowledge on certain area. If a youth have to make a snap decision but do not have the necessary knowledge or know-how, instinctively youths will seek the majority’s opinions to make the decisions.
• Example : If an non-techie youth wants to get a MP3 player yet not having the necessary knowledge on which brand and model to purchase, what will he/she do? She will surely ask for recommendations. Chances are, more than half of her friends will recommend her Apple Ipod.
• A metaphor for this scenario – Imagine yourself standing in the middle of the road in a foreign country and there are two restaurants on both sides of you. On the left is a restaurant packed with people. One the right side is an empty restaurant. You know nothing about both restaurants but when you have to make a decision, you will very probably go to the packed restaurant. Why? Rationally thinking, the chances of you choosing the restaurant to go is 50/50. <hanging>
• Another factor where peer influence will play a role in influencing standpoint is when youths are surrounded by friends who <hanging>

How do brands influence youths?

• What brands do today is they align youth’s idealism and motivation with their products and services. It helps youths to create an identity for themselves <hanging>

Youths are Emotional

Think with their heart, not so much with the brain <hanging>

I don’t feel like writing much this week, so I will post more pictures instead.

First up, I took a so called comprehensive personality test and this was my result:

(click to enlarge)

I’m not really sure whether this character strength ranking is really accurate to describe me well but I think the first three and last three strength are probably placed correctly. Probably.

Arts!!

You know, I actually really love arts. Not those kind of ‘picasso-ish’ abstract arts that always confuse people, rather, those modern and trendy arts that depict fashionable ladies stylishly. I’m totally crazy over them it is almost a fetish to me. I have plenty of these arts in digital format in my computer, but I think nothing beats the real piece of printed artwork on a physical paper.

Without any doubts, Jason Brooks is on top of the game when it comes to stylish arts. Yes, get me one of these for my birthday present, and I will give you a kiss, alright?

The price for these arts are kinda steep especially after the conversion rate (Ringgit to Pounds). But I swear I will get few of these artworks one day, frame them up nicely and put it up in my room.  Wooo~

So for the mean time while waiting for the day to come, I will support our local Malaysian art which is way more affordable for myself – like PlasterDoll!

Obviously, Plasterdoll is not as brilliant as Jason Brooks’ arts, but I still like it nevertheless. It comes the closest to what I really like at a decent price – ladies in stylish fashion.

I got one of these recently and planned to get another one soon when I have the time. Actually, the art is too girlish for myself, so I would want to keep them and give it away as gifts to friends.

I have only 5 minutes to write this, so I will just throw everything very randomly.

I have written how reptiles are less evolved than mammals in the post Structure of Life. But I wrote it more on philosophical context. Last week while I was reading a random book, I found a solid scientific evidence to support my view.

All brains are divided to 2 parts – the Old Pathway and New Pathway.

Old Pathway is the most fundamental part of our brain and is responsible for the fight or flight survival skills. It mainly deals with coordination, orientation, and position of objects.

New Pathway allows analytical decision making, conscious thought, categorizing objects and high level processing.

In other words, brain evolved from simplicity to complexity. Simple creatures only have the Old Pathway while sophisticated creatures evolved New Pathway, built on the Old Pathway.

Try this : Throw a Nerf ball at a (human) friend’s head. The first few times he will duck, but once he realizes it won’t hurt him, he’ll have no problems standing still as it clobbers him. Now try it with an alligator. Although alligators have been on this planet for three hundred million years longer than people, they’ll never figure out that they don’t need to dodge Nerf balls. They’ll flinch no matter how many times you throw the ball at them. In fact, they’ll try to eat you no matter what you throw at them. – Dan Roam

This is what I’d learn here – Lesser brain always blindly react to things instead of analyzing the situation because lesser brain did not evolved to understand it. Now, how can we apply this to the context of human intelligence?