Struggling with Meaninglessness

• Why do people help each other? What is the motivation behind the act of helping?
• For people who understand evolutionary psychology, the answer is apparent – we help each other for selfish purposes. We inherently seek reciprocation with other human beings.
• Reciprocation is an essential behaviour in human and the primates. It is a very sophisticated method of teamwork to ensure our own survival. I help you and you help me. I scratch your back and you scratch my back.
• People often delude themselves into thinking that they are helping other people out of their own own kindness – They believe they are compassionate, sympathetic and well, good people, and that’s why they help the others.
• FALSE! If only human being is such simple creature.
• Every time we help someone, there’s always an underlying motivation lurking behind. When we help someone, there’s always this ‘expectation’ that this person will help us back in the future when we need it.
• Hence, this is the reason why we dislike people taking our help for granted. We love to be appreciated when we offer our help to the others. We expect the other side to give back when we need it.
• What I want to point out here is simple – our intention to help others is not as ‘Pure’ as we thought.
• However, there is a group of people who, most of them, practice unconditional love. They are parents.
• Parents are one of the few groups of people in this world where they could just give, give, give and give without expecting any returns.
• Thinking very objectively, this phenomenon is rather amazing. Why do most parents care more for their own children than the neighbor’s children? Why do parents love their own children more than the neighbor’s children? Aren’t all of them children?
• Hence, in some ways, although parents practice unconditional love to children, it is actually a very ‘selective’ unconditional love. They only love and prioritize their own children. Period.
• Again, this intention of love, is selfish and not 100% pure.
• I have a theory that every single action and intention of ours when interacting with other people, to some extent, are motivated by an underlying selfish desire. Well, I know this is not a new theory since Dawkins have already been talking about it in the book “The Selfish Genes”.
• What are the three amazing lessons I learned from this observation?
  • How amazingly human are hardwired to value reciprocation, a more sophisticated level of cooperation for survival purposes. Some group of animals practice cooperation such as lions, bees, oxen, hyena, etc but none of them are as sophisticated as the behaviour of reciprocation practiced in human being.
  • How amazing human is programmed and hardwired to dislike people who do not value our help/love or people who took our help/love for granted. How we are motivated to help. How we always expect people to return the favour. How all these programmed mind-set work since birth without being thought by anyone.
  • Parents, who have the capacity to provide unconditional love, only limit their love towards their own family but could not extend this boundless love to other children and people.
• A two cent question – Will human mind ever evolve, get enlightened and break this non-purity barrier? What if everyone does not have this love barrier? Wouldn’t it be a better world? Can human develop a pure mind as comparable to Buddha and love everyone without boundary and barrier? 
• I believe we can only call our intention pure when it comes to a day when we help and love other people out of joy, compassion and kindness without expecting any returns of favour. The intention of helping others because we want to be happy. Purity.

PS: Writing a full blown 1000-2000 words essay is mega tiring and time consuming. With this point form method, blogging will be fun again. From today onwards, I’m going to start using this point form method to write. Till then.

One evening in my college library, around 5 years ago, I was reading Harvard Business Review and came across a very interesting case study of how Dell’s management information system work. Although it is now a conventional wisdom in the business world, back then the whole concept was pretty revolutionary.

This case study was about the process of what happen from the start – when the customer place an order, to the finish line, when Dell deliver the items, step by step. The case study kept emphasizing on one very important factor. Just one – and that’s Efficiency. There are many advantages to an organization which put emphasis on efficiency. Among the list :

• Reduce operating cost
• Prevent excessive spending
• Fast speed product/service delivery
• Customer satisfaction
• Lean management of resources

Once I was done reading the case study, I spent 30 minutes to chew on this ‘revelation’ of the impeding new business world.  Every organization would want to utilize computer system to create efficiency in every part of their business department from productions to administration.

Efficiency is simply the new God of business. If you do not embrace efficiency, inefficiency will curse and condemn your business. Like a devoted worshipper, every business must give praise to Efficiency.

So, I started to think of how I could apply Efficiency to other areas of life. I forgot how I came about this, but I wickedly started to imagine how I could apply efficiency to robbery.

I imagined, if I want to rob someone, what will be the most efficient way to rob my victim? What is the surefire method of 101% success?

And I figured out the answer – It’s slash-n-rob. Use a knife or machete and slash the victim first, making him or her bleed and injured and then take the time to grab the belongings away. And then run away – 101% success.

The more I thought of it, the more I realized how dumb most robbers in Malaysia was for sticking to conventional methods of threatening victims.

OK, let’s imagine that you are a robber and you found a victim. When you take the knife, and approach the victim, point the knife to the victim’s neck and ask the infamous question – “Money or Life?”, you are actually taking a chance. Perhaps a better word would be risk.

The universal law says that if you are taking a chance, you are actually leaving things to fate. And that’s dumb. What if the guy knows Kung Fu? What if the girl is hiding a pepper spray somewhere? You are actually giving yourself room to be completely doomed by the victim. A highly motivated and successful robber will never rely on fate and chance to succeed. You have to take charge of your own fate! (Oh yeah, I sound like a personal development guru for robbers).

Hence, I concluded that any robber who understand the value of innovation will eventually embrace efficiency – Slash-n-Rob. Slash first, and slowly rob the victim. What’s the advantage of this method? Plenty.

1. Immobilize the victim. A slash on victim’s arm will make him/her to unable to fight back. A slash on the leg will make him/her unable to run.

2. Let the fear sink in to their head. Their life is now at the robber’s hands. They will listen to him. They will surrender everything to him without needing any form threatening. Because human being instinctively let fear rule over their head.

3. Disallow the possibility of shit happening. An injured and frightened victim can’t do shit.

How about the disadvantages of slash-n-rob? Well, there are no disadvantages. Robbing is already a sin, so what difference does it make to commit another sin? The robber will just spend slightly more time imprisoned in jail if caught. No big deal.

Now, let’s switch roles and step on different shoes. Close your eyes and imagine you are an ordinary person taking a stroll in a park. Suddenly, a robber slashes you from behind without saying a single word. Terrifying isn’t it? You would have surrendered everything you have to the robber, no? That’s why I called this a surefire method to success because uncertainly and helplessness amplify Fear.

5 years later, today, this method has became a reality in Malaysia. Slash-n-rob method is getting popular and is slowly adopted as the modus operandi for modern robbers. Many slash-n-rob cases were not covered by the media for one simple reason – to avoid public panic and bringing fear to public people.

So, the robbers in Malaysia have evolved. Just like in the law of Evolution, when the predator is getting stronger, the prey must also evolved along or die. And for this reason, I took the first step by getting myself an Air-soft gun. I do not know how useful this is for self-defense against slash-n-rob, but I figured having an Air gun is better than no air gun. True or true?

Don’t believe me in this, but I would want to believe in 20-30 years small robbers in Malaysia will evolve and will be using guns because many ‘prey and victims’ will follow my method of protecting themselves by using air gun. So, the robbers will have to evolve and become even more aggressive. I predict shot-n-rob will be something common in this country in the future.

PS: I’m stuck writing my part 2 swimming pool story. GARHHH

This is my desktop table. I have no shame to self-proclaim this engineering masterpiece of mine as the 8th Wonder of the World. You know, the greatest construction since Hanging Garden of Babylon. And who knows, Hanging Garden of Babylon might just be another man-made myth for the sake of glorifying the Babylonian civilization. But my months of painstaking engineering effort is 100% provable REAL and proudly made in Malaysia. Period. So, am I not significantly more credible than .. um .. Nebuczaza… Nebunezar? Damn, who was the joker who gave him such mocking name. Hold on, let me Google up his name. *Tap tap tap tap tap tap. Click. Click. Copy paste.* That’s right, Nebuchadnezzar. So, am I not significantly more credible than Nebuchadnezzar II who may have built nothing? Am I not a more credible engineer compared to him??

Black-chrome-with-glowing-blue-light gadgets is my biggest turn-ons, beaten only by my Japanese XXX videos. But there are times I just can’t help to wonder – where did the joy came from? What’s the rationale behind my obsession towards black chrome objects and designs? Why do I think the glowing blue light is beautiful?

Do you notice there are certain little things in life which often creates a little joy in you? Like when you see some creamy donuts or when you’re attracted to the sleek Nike shoe design or when the gentle wind blow on your face? It would be understandable if we ask why do we feel joy and salivate when looking at tasty-fresh-from-the-oven chicken meat and hot sexy girls. The reasons for these are simple – For the former, obviously it is our inner motivation urging us to devour the food or else we will starve, literally and the latter, it is also our inner motivation urging us to ‘devour’ the ‘food’ or else we will ‘starve’, metaphorically.

But why chrome design? I don’t intend to bring up the graphics, but I’m not going to make love and copulate with my Razer keyboard, right? So, what’s the reason I like my gadget designs so much? Moreover, why do I like it when it is drizzling? Why do I enjoy listening to House music? Why do I get a sense of satisfaction after completing the jigsaw puzzle?

I have asked plenty of whys and even stopped myself from asking more whys, but the answer remained elusive. Now, I have two choices here. One, I say ‘God did it’ and never bother about finding the answer anymore. Or two, I accept the fact I don’t know, yet.

Like all wise men do, I resigned to the fact that I don’t know. (I have to choose this or else Socrates would be mad at me if I chose the first option instead).

There are some things which I still do not understand well but there are some which I think make logical sense – like why we think beach and forest are beautiful. You see, beach and forest are our natural habitat, just like polar bear will be happy to see ice and camel will be happy to be in the sand. As an omnivorous creature, forest represents a place for food where we can find plenty of fruit, plants and animal meat. Plus as a primate, our ancestors were living and swinging from tree to the tree. Hence, theoretically, we are emotionally triggered to like forest in a way to motivate us to reside and breed in the forest for survival purposes.

(Another interesting thing is – do you all notice that the all the biggest cities in the world are usually situated near the sea? I know the fact that ancient cities is situated near the sea for trading purposes, but I just couldn’t stop wonder if there is a correlation between this and our fondness towards beach?)

I do not have evidence for this, but I have a theory that people would be truly happier if we live in the forest instead of in a city. Or at least in suburb areas where trees are abundant.

I believe anyone who could crack the code of the origin of joy will have a massive upper hand advantage in the marketing industry. One good example is the joy of seeing shiny and glowing objects. For some weird reasons, human have some kind of obsessions towards glowing and shiny objects. And this is the same reason why some metal materials (such as Gold and Silver) and gemstone (Diamond, Sapphire, Jade) are very well sought after. People are willing to pay high price for these objects. But hey, logically thinking, they are just … stones and metal. Why nobody is willing to pay high price for the stones in my goldfish aquarium? That’s right, that’s because my stones did not mutate to glow in dark, hence no value.

Sucks to be you, stone in my aquarium.

One of my ‘filters’ when looking for a female partner is to avoid girls who are super-emotional. I think they are rather nuisance to my intelligence and is absolutely nerve racking.

To be fair, I know the female species are generally more emotional than guys. Heck, even my mum’s hot temper could occasionally shatter my rationality into pieces. But I’m perfectly fine with it because her emotions is only slightly above normal level, unlike some small group of extreme emotional females who can never cease being emotional.

I will call these scary species as the “super-emo ladies”.

There are no other creatures in this planet who could mindfuck me to kingdom come – Only them, the super-emo ladies have this ‘mind blowing’ mutant ability. Listening to a super-emo lady rants is pure torture. Beyond hell. They are Satan’s favourite pets. My intelligence will never fail to break down and cry every time they open their mouth and transmit the never-ending-emo-acoustic-vibrations to my ears.

When I’m with a super-emo lady, I will be so psyched up to the point I will become a God-believer – Just for the sheer moment. I will look up at the sky and ask the heavens philosophically – “I can shut my eyes, i can shut my mouth, I can stop breathing, but why can’t I shut my ears? What’s the rationale of God designing human to not able to shut our ears? Why do we HAVE NO CHOICE but to listen to emo rants?”

If God tries to be funny, I could imagine this is how He will reply me – “When a super-emo lady make an emo-rant, and no man is listening to her, is she still ranting?”

……… *confused* ………

Stop Shakespear-ing with me, God!!!

Throughout my experience talking with super-emo ladies, I noticed they have a pattern in their mind. This is one of the scenarios where I can apply my Flake Theory in. They are trapped with their emotions at one part of the brain and couldn’t escape. Hence, they will keep repeating the super-emo process cycle. I will explain what super-emo process cycle shortly.

But to be honest, as time went on, I started to develop a little compassion towards super-emo ladies. And then my friend introduced me to David Deida’s book The Way Of The Superior Man. My compassion towards the female species doubled. I started to see where did super-emo ladies came from. I started to sympathize them as no females would want to become super-emo lady if they ever have a choice.

But still, it didn’t change the fact that I wish my ears could shut down whenever they speak. Too bad.

It has been some time since I’ve encountered a super-emo lady. Until last week. Let’s call her Miss E, my college-mate back in my college days. She has just broken up a one month relationship with a guy recently – Her first love. Clearly, she was unhappy. She needed people to talk to. She wanted to share her problems. Out of sympathy, 5 guys including myself  invited her to a chat room in MSN Messenger to listen to her feelings. But to be honest, we were more interested in listening to gossip more than caring for her. All the guys were listening to her problems intently. But I take little interest in her problems because all I heard was purely emo rants.

She kept ranting and ranting telling how sad she was, how she hated the guy, why starting relationship with him was a mistake, how the guy betrayed her. Kept calling the guy ‘sucker’. Yada yada bla bla bla. Never ending rants and kept repeating the points over and over again.

This is when my friend Mr. J, the ever down to earth Mr. Nice Guy tried to keep consoling and advice her. For 30 minutes, he with his good patience tried to console her with his polite relationship wisdom.

But my guts told me what Mr. J doing was utterly bullshit. His advice will only fall to deaf ears. I would have spent the 30 minutes watching plants grow instead. It would have been more interesting. 

You see, super-emo girls are selfish.  They just wanna spill their emotions. And spill more. And more. What you have to say is irrelevant and pointless. They are treating our ears as slaves. (But since we chatted in MSN, in this case, our eyes became slaves instead.) It is a one way communication. And they are particularly sensitive when you tell them that they are in the wrong side. They are trapped in one side of the brain and couldn’t see the other sides. The process repeats by itself and this is what the super-emo process cycle I mentioned is all about.

After few hours of ranting, now she rant about the SMSes she received.

Miss E : You should have read the SMSes from the guy. Even you would be angry after reading the SMSes.

Mr. J : Really? What did the messages say?

Miss E : But if I open up the messages, it will hurt me again. I don’t want to think about this guy anymore.

Mr . J : Delete all the messages then. Don’t keep them. I want you to move forward, not stuck in the past. You should forget about that guy. Life is … <bla-bla-bla-bla-typical-boring-nice-guy’s-advice-yawwnnnwn-bla-bla>. Don’t think about him anymore. If you have problems talk to us.

I, who was quiet throughout the conversation, suddenly recalled David Deida’s message. Then I decided to rock the boat instead.

Ronn : Show me the messages. I want to read.

Miss E: Really?

Ronn: Yes, I want to read.

Miss E: Um, Ok … Wait, I will connect my mobile phone to my PC.

BAM BAM. My two liner has owned Mr. J’s essay of advice. TOTAL OWNAGE. PWNED. 30 MINUTES DOWN THE DRAIN. I could feel Mr. J wanted to demand her to give him back his 30 minutes of time. And it has proven David Deida’s theory right! What A Gem! The wisest man ever lived on planet Earth after Sun Tzu!

More importantly, I started to understand a little why Nice Guys always lose.

OK, let’s leave out the super-emo lady for a little while. Let’s understand about girls in general. You see, when a typical girl is influx with emotions, no matter happy or sad, she will go beyond human-like. She becomes an Oracle. An oracle do not tell you directly what will happen or what she wants. Instead, she speaks in ‘codes’ and it is up to us, the men, the mere mortal, to decipher her words.

The science behind an Oracle’s mind is not as straight forward as mortal’s thoughts. When an Oracle speaks, she is not using words to describe her thoughts like what most men always do. Rather, she is using words to express her emotions. And for men who have less compassion and wisdom, deciphering Oracle’s words is a mess. And that’s why many men complained they have problems understanding females. And it is also the same reason why the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is such a big hit although the content of the book is total waste of crap. It all boils down to the methodology of communication.

Remember she is an Oracle. She is no ordinary human being. When having an audience with the Oracle and when she has a message for us, we shou…

Alter Ego : Whoa, I’m sorry to interrupt you but I have a question. By that, do you mean there are 3 billion Oracles on this planet?

Ronn : Urm. Figuratively speaking, yes.

Alter Ego : What is so special about it if half of the population are Oracles?

Ronn : Well, it is just a metaphor anyway. Plus, I’m tapping on the power of ‘communicating to emotions’, you know. It is powerful and will make the ladies feel flattered.  =)

Alter Ego : Another words for apple-polishing?

Ronn : Dude, you need some sense of compassion.

Alter Ego : Well, it just didn’t fit in to my logic right to use the word Oracle. The word is too big of a label for them.

Ronn : I suspect you are a male chauvinist donkey.

Alter Ego : I am you and you are me. Yes, I suspect that as well.

Ronn : I think you’re nice and gentleman.

OK, I guess I will stop using the world Oracle since my alter ego bitched about it. Instead I believe practical examples will work best :

• Boy : What do you want to eat for dinner?
  Girl : Up to you. I’m OK with anything.

Interpretation : When a guy says ‘up to you’, we REALLY meant ‘up to you’. But for a girl, it means that she can’t decide and it up to the guy to decide. However, she expects the guy to make the best decision for her. Hence, if she expects dining in a good restaurant and the guy brings her to a fast food restaurant instead, she will frown in disgust… because it is not really ‘up to you’ after all.

• Girl : I want to eat the ice-cream, but I’m worried it will make me fat =(

Interpretation : She WANTS to eat the ice-cream. Plus, she needs a ‘delusional reassurance’ from the guy that it will not make her fat. Feed her more ice-cream to gain more love points.

• Girl : I hate it when you keep watching the TV the whole day.

Interpretation: There’s nothing wrong with watching TV actually. She just doesn’t like the guy to waste so much time with the TV instead of doing something productive… Or perhaps spending time with her.

• Girl : You should read the messages. But I do not want to read the messages again. It hurts me.

Interpretation : She WANTS to show it to you. The words ‘it hurts me’ means she wants the guy to ‘share her pain’. She expects the guy to insist of showing him.

• Girl : Don’t buy any gifts for me, OK. Don’t waste your money.

Interpretation : If she says this, especially when the date is near some special occasion, she is actually ‘reminding’ you about it.

Hence, to deal with girl’s words, sometimes you gotta think the big picture a little. Just a little. Decode her emotions, not words. And this is a little problem with most typical Nice Guys – Nice Guys take girls words literally.

I clicked on my blog category – Atheism and realized I have not written anything about Atheism in this blog for the past 6 months. And yes, that was exactly the day I vowed not to write about Atheism anymore in my post Thank You Alter Ego and I can’t believe I actually kept my words.

The reason why I stopped writing about atheism, was not because I thought I was wrong. In fact two of my most logically constructed essays were about the improbability of God’s existence.

• http://ronnyeo.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/on-the-concept-of-infinity-and-irrationality/
• http://ronnyeo.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/applying-multi-dimensional-thinking-to-atheism/

I, objectively and subjectively, believe atheism is the truth. However, I do not want to go to the extend of being obsessed by the beliefs and that’s why, I have stopped writing about atheism.

How do I see religion?

I see religion‘s existence as something inevitable to human civilization. Borrowing an idea from Sigmund Freud, religion plays a pivotal role in human’s growth, civilization, culture and mental development. Without it, we would not have became civilized as there will be nothing to ‘control’ the masses and to move us to a common direction. Sure, our history wasn’t pretty as plenty of people has been sacrificed in the name of religion. But more importantly, we are here today because of the things which human have gone through in the history.

Therefore, this thought was exactly why I gained certain acceptance towards religion’s existence which I once opposed fervently. Religion has to happen along the process. Just like to have a gun, bow need to exist first. Or to have a car, we first need wheels to exist. To have light bulb, we first need to know how to manipulate fire. It is all in the long chain of causes and effects. For a baby to grow up, he needs to learn how to walk first. A baby walker is a fine tool to help the baby to learn walking. But as we know, once the child fully learns how to walk, the baby walker will eventually become obsolete. The baby walker is part of the process to help a child grow.

With this realization, I stop being obsessed with atheism.

The danger of being obsessed.

The reason why I brought up atheism again in this post is to highlight one very important point here – Obsession is dangerous. The day I realized I’m obsessed with atheism, I know I must kick it away.

I owe this mini-enlightenment of mine to a theory I conceived – I call this little discovery of mine – The Flake Theory.

I find it hard to summarize properly in words the idea of this in simple short sentence due to my limited vocabulary. So, I will try my best to explain the process instead.

Let’s look at the picture above. First we see an entity which have many branches spanning all over the places – I will call it mind-network. In the centre of the mind-network, we have the Core. Core is the point of origin – the state where the ‘energy’ will rest when in idle/emptiness. This ‘energy’ is basically like a drone which function to carry information. When we request the mind to start thinking, the energy will begin to explore various paths. When we need to think deeper, the energy will go on and dig deeper down the rabbit hole. The energy will relentlessly explore the mind-network to search for ideas/solutions/answers. This energy could disperse to different places simultaneously. We can explore the left side of the mind-network, the right side, top and bottom at the same time. When we are done with our thinking, the energy will return back to the Core. This is when we stop doing hard thinking.

However, there are other times when we decide to linger too long and stay in one particular region of the mind-network maze . When the energy resides in certain part of the mind-network for a long period, the energy will begin to have the habit of residing there and reluctant to return back to the Core. Slowly, this energy will recall other dispersed energy and gradually the energy will converge and remain in one particular area. Our mind always focus on where the energy is strongest, hence, when there is a strong energy trapped in one region, so will our mind trapping along with it. And that’s why some people are obsessed with beliefs -They were mentally trapped.

Perhaps an example will give more clarity to what I’m trying to say. 

Let’s say I start a cult, spreading the belief that water on earth is actually dragon’s spit. According to the ‘prophecy’, if we don’t worship the dragon, It will become angry and will stop spitting at us, hence bringing draught seasons to our puny world. This illusion of fear, thus will attract a group of curious people. They weren’t really convinced at first, the energy in their mind is still well dispersed between believing and being skeptical. But as they become more superstitious, the energy in the believing region will start to attract all the energy from the skeptic region. Gradually, the energy will accumulate and converge in believing region. Hence, the process from a skeptic to confused to a believer.

As these believers become more and more convinced, the energy will focus more and more in the particular region, thus reinforce and align itself with the belief of dragon’s existence. The energy finds its comfort zone within the region. For instance, the energy will gradually reside permanently in the red circle region in the graphic above and refuse, or couldn’t, return to the Core. These believers now have become obsessed with the beliefs.

Every morning, the moment they wake up from sleep, the mind will automatically focus on the energy’s position. Therefore, the first thing which always come to the mind of these believers the moment they are awake is the image of the divine dragon. When they let their mind wander while taking a shower, the mind will automatically and unconsciously focus on the energy in that region, again. When they surf the internet, the energy will push them to find evidence to support the idea [ water = dragon spit ] to reinforce their beliefs. Whenever they talk to their friends, they try to convince their friends that water was created by dragon’s spit. To these believers, people who reject dragon’s existence is an idiot. The dragon is the Truth.

From a simple 3 or 4 branches of paths, over time the region will keep expand and expand, thus becoming a more complex network as these believers devote enormous amount of time focusing the energy in the region. Believers start to create more and more complex stories, theories, speculations about the dragon. They dedicate their life to the illusion of dragon – They are officially and royally trapped in the network region of their mind. They no longer could understand other counter-perspectives because the energy refuse to explore other parts of the mind – It just want to stay in the comfort zone. 

Analogy and Meditation

I observed there are two kind of dog owners who exhibit different behaviours when taking their dogs for an evening walk. The first one is a strict owner. He will determine the route of where he will want to go and the dog will have to obey him. Another kind of dog owner is the one who usually gives ‘liberty’ to the dog. He will let the dog decides where to move and he will just follow along.

You see, if owners do not strictly control the dog,  these dogs always like to move around at its own direction with little concern to its owner. To have an obedient dog, owner need to be strict, or else the dog will want to go its way. Similarly, I believe the energy in our mind is rebellious. It always want to move around, keep exploring the mind, keep asking questions, keep reminding you of things and keep bugging you. Or worse, force you to succumb  and get obsessed to certain beliefs because the energy found a comfort zone in certain part of the mind.

This is the same reason why we can’t shut down our inner voice/chatterbox. And I believe this is exactly one of the function of meditation – to control this rebellious energy and keep it at the Core. We will control where the energy move, not where the energy want to move us. It is dangerous to be slave to our own mind.

More application of Flake Theory

Beliefs do not just limit to religion. We can apply Flake Theory to any topic which have the element of beliefs, such as politics, movements or association. Below are some examples …

• I personally have a slight doubt of the validity of global warming. A typical environmentalist upon hearing my opinion will be quick to condemn me, calling me a ‘Denier’. But really, are those environmentalist 100% sure that Earth’s temperature do not fluctuate throughout the history? Is it true that Earth’s temperature is suppose to be linear throughout its lifetime only to be ‘interrupted’ by massive amount of carbon dioxide manufactured by human today?

Or are these environmentalist already trapped in their mind? (Because environmentalist will lose a big cause to champion if global warming is not real)

• Flake Theory is also applicable to emotions. Often, we come across people who seemed to be emotionally trapped – Someone who seems to be eternally struggling with depression, angst, anxiety, and frustrations especially among teenagers.
• Some people are dreamers who kept dreaming and dreaming without taking actions. They are stuck in one region of the brain and kept thinking about the future, way ahead of their time and refuse to face the current reality. They are trapped in their fantasy.

Note: Actually, I wrote Flake Theory from a more philosophical perspective rather than neuroscience/psychological. So, I won’t dare to say this is the exact way how our mind works. But I will just say I got this idea while I was half-asleep.

Note: I pondered for some time before publishing this post because I think it is a little biased towards feminism in general. But I think it is worth reading at the same time. So, a little disclaimer here, when I mention feminist, I’m actually referring to radical or extreme feminist.

There was an essay I’ve written over a year ago – The Perceived Value – my little discovery on why comparing and critiquing intelligence between races and genders is such a sensitive issue. If only my English writing was better back then, the essay would have been perfect – it was one of my all time favourite observations I’d made. (I write better these days and I’m still trying to improve on my writing). And I’ve never hide the fact that I dislike radical feminists. A year ago, I mildly dismissed the ideology of feminism. But today, I will take one step harsher and explain in length on why modern radical feminists are bunch of confused people.

I think feminist are exactly the opposite of male chauvinist pig … that’s right … female chauvinist pig. Feminism over the years have evolved away from its noble purpose of creating awareness and defending women rights to creating new ridiculous ‘belief systems’. I feel today feminism has become more like a medium for angry women to vent their hatred and frustration towards man. Few typical examples of feminist irrationality:

• Feminists complain when a TV show make fun/joke about women
• Feminists are upset when a movie portray the actress as weak
• Feminists complain when a research put “He” instead of “She” as example
• Feminists always deny any research which shows men are better in certain things than women

My personal ‘favourite” irrational belief from the feminist is -“Men and Women are innately equal. It is the culture which created different roles in gender.”  Every time I hear this statement, I feel like crying out loud to the lady – “Bullshit”! Well, actually I’ve never done it before and never intended to but you get the picture of how silly the statement is to me. Here’s my take on this issue.

We have to look back at the history to investigate the origin of humanity – The evolutionary root. Many thousands years ago, humanity were living in a hunter-gatherer society – The Men were the Hunters while the Women were the Gatherers. These roles were shaped by natural selection to ensure the survival of human species. You see, human’s survival actually wasn’t really easy back then. Due to the complexity of human being, it takes plenty of effort from a human to develop a child properly (typically need to spend 15-20 years to grow up a child). At the same time, due to our higher intelligence, our brain consumes massive amount of energy, hence our ancestors needed plenty of food. This is how through natural selection, the nature has discover a perfect method for human species to survive properly – distributing roles between male and female. The men will hunt for meat while women will take care of the young and gather food which is easier to get such as fruits. This method worked well, and it is also the same reason why we still exist today. Even our species’ cousin chimpanzees are living in a similar societal structure.

And here, we have feminists who believe that men and women are born blank slate with nothing attached, just like a piece of pure blank white paper. Bam! There goes evolutionary psychology and genetics down the drain. These deluded feminists believe they could overwrite the millions of years of evolutionary history by imposing a fantasy-ideology to people, totally in disregard with our biological history.

There’s a reason why men could develop muscle easier compared to women. You see, our genes do not understand what is a fast food restaurant. Our genes today is still similar with our cavemen ancestor who have to wrestle and carry animal meat back home. That’s why muscular men still exist today. But thinking logically, we do not need so much muscle today as compared to thousand years ago. Why didn’t the culture make big muscle extinct? See, by just substituting intelligence with muscle, we could already clearly see how ridiculous the statement by the feminist! Is there really a difference between brain power and muscle power when both are the subject of Evolution? If brain power between gender are equal, why is muscle power not equal? Again, it all boils down to my early observation of The Perceived Value. Of course, I’m sure we will gradually evolve away from our ancestor, but the majority of our basic instinct is still pretty primitive as of today…just like most ladies still enjoy chivalry from the gentlemen, no?

Let’s look at another example of irrationality from feminism. Look at prostitutions, one of feminist’s favourite topic. Feminism consistently urge to abolish prostitution as they like to call it a sex ‘exploitation’ by men on women. But think about it, on the flip side, men actually paid women for sex and this is a fact often conveniently ignored and disregarded by the feminist – So, the million dollar question here – Who is Exploiting Who? Just as men and exploited women for sex, could it also mean that women are exploiting men for money? Is this not a fair trade in accordance to the law of Supply and Demand?

Perhaps, I sound like a MCP who is desperate to put women down. But I totally respect women. Having grown up living in a single parent family, I do not need anyone to tell me how capable a woman is. And I totally believe in equal rights and equal opportunities should be given to all genders. But the truth is still truth. Men and Women are biologically not the same. Men play a bigger role in leading and shaping the world while women supported and complemented men. In any case, just check the history if you have doubts. That’s why I call feminist confused – they are confused between the differences of equality and sameness.

I do not believe in extremes not matter what the circumstances are. I believe extremism distort our view in perceiving the reality. I believe when feminism first started out, their intention was noble and right. But slowly, feminists got obsessed with it and turn it into a political power. And they got even more obsessed with it and start creating delusional reality to fit it into their belief systems. Feminism has now generally become the blame-the-men movement, taking a holier than thou stance as if all women are victims and there are no evil and malicious females out there.

I’m pretty glad that feminism is not a big thing in Asian countries. To see women as ‘same’ with men is a big mistake because I believe it will only condition genders to compete with each and to see each other as a ‘threat’- Just like US and China aggressively competing with each other because they believe they are the ‘same’ when it comes to power. Men and women are not supposed to compete with each other – We should work together. To work together harmoniously, there need to be an acceptance in our innate abilities and nature and to know who we are and what we can do.

I have not been writing any fresh original essays since 30th December – (The Big Elephant), and it actually kinda frustrates me …  You know, the feeling of the brain being lazy and clogged up and refuse to think for such long period of time. But after a good one week break, I finally feel re-energized and fresh again .. for now.

So, this essay of mine is slightly inspired by the anime/manga Naruto (all time best manga, in my opinion) by Masashi Kishimoto. I have been following this manga for 7 years! (430+ episodes to date and still running). From the outside, it may just look like a typical fiction manga but actually the whole story is pretty much inspired with philosophy of Ninja and some other classical Japanese philosophy.

Obviously, Naruto is the protagonist of the story and the villains are a group of S-Class ninja organization called as Akatsuki. Read the quote below:

Konoha is far from godless. They view their previous generations (ancestors) as heavenly beings and act with the ‘Will of Fire’ as their main ideology… although you could say it’s just another excuse to fight and war.

Religion, ideals, resources, land, grudges, love, pride … any trivial reasons that motivates people to action will eventually breed war. The reason can be thought up after the fact, but war will never cease to exist.… because human nature consistently pursue strife and struggle. What people truly want is to fight.  – Pain, leader of Akatsuki (when responding to Hidan, an Akatsuki ninja who called Konoha people, the village where Naruto came from, as godless infidels.) 

“What people truly want is to fight”.

If the statement above is true and can be applied to our real world, then why has war lessen over the years? Why most people today detest war?  I’ll attempt to tackle this question.

My Theory on why War has lessen.

It is true that people are still dying from local war today especially in the middle east region but on a global scale, war between powerful nations have already ceased since the Vietnam War days in the 60/70s. In other words, we are already in the state of global peace for almost 40 years now. But let’s ask a simple question – What drove people to war in the first place? Why throughout the history of humanity did we get ourselves involved in constant fighting and conflicts?

First of all, I believe it is safe to say that fighting and warring is a male thing. Essentially, this aggressive behaviour is driven to feed one major basic male instinct – Competitiveness. If you branch out this competitiveness instinct, many other typical traits will appear to be obvious such as – territorial (by dominating and occupying others) , recognition (by seeking status, power and fame), ideals, and a whole long list of other behaviours – Hence, our motivation to fight and war.

However, as we could expect from this impermanent world, things evolve. It is pretty obvious the world as we know today is very different from the world we had 40 years ago in terms of culture advancement. And I believe the evolution of world technology and culture has saturated this element of competitiveness which constantly drove humanity to war previously. I do not have rich vocabulary in me, so I will just call this phenomenon as Instinct Saturation.

How Instinct Saturation Works?

I truly believe there are some emotions (depending on individuals) that need to be consistently fed. These emotions are like gluttony-monsters. If not fed well, these ‘hungry’ emotions will rebel against us by giving us the feeling of deprivation, agitation or some kind of withdrawal. Among the emotions that need to be consistently fed, as I could think of, are boredom, love, lust, excitement, emotional-security, and competitiveness.

So, in the olden days, how do people feed this emotion of competitiveness? Yes, as I’ve said earlier, we fight and war to feed this emotion. This is also partly due to the emotion being directly tied to the environmental condition during the old days when people lived in the state of poverty or semi-poverty where most common people do not get to eat and live comfortably. Therefore, once the common people was psyched up by the country leader’s propaganda (usually emphasizing on Injustice and Evilness inflicted by enemy to psychologically push people’s hot button), common people will go to the battlefield and fight, preparing to risk their life to win the war in exchanging the opportunity for better life (that’s why military leaders always inspire people to fight for future generations). That’s how people unleash their competitiveness. It might not seem rational or logical, but hey this is how emotion works. Just like what Pain said – “The reason can be thought up after the fact”

But that was 40 years back and beyond, back to thousands years ago. Back then, life was tough. Today, life has become much easier due to the rise of standard of living. Most people get to eat and live comfortably well today. Therefore, there’s not much to gain from going to war but instead there are plenty to lose.

But more importantly today, we have more modern alternatives to feed our competitive desires and saturate our strong competitive instinct. For instance, we have PC games and console games where we could unleash our competiveness by attempting to win game challenges. Then we have satellite, where sports are broadcasted live all around the world and allow fans to support their favourite sports teams or person (piggybacking on the sport team’s success to fulfill our competitive desire). Also our competitiveness has already been saturated by business corporations where we have now shifted our competitiveness into our work and organizational role. And we have many other social activities which could also very well saturate the instinct.

In others words, our competitive aggressive behaviour which was like a hot orb previously, ready to pounce on any opportunity to fight and war once psyched up, is already saturated and dispersed by many form of ‘distractions’.

Today, as humanity evolved, the hot orb in us begin to saturate, and we became a little bit ‘Buddha’ (peaceful). We start to realized how stupid war is once we stop attaching ourselves to that intense emotion and see the big picture a little. However, I’m sure the people in the past will thought war was the right thing to do. I will give an analogy – think back on the dumbest or silliest thing you did when you were a teenager. Now that you think back, you may wonder why did you made such action which clearly embarrassed you. But back then in that heat of the moment, you most probably think what you did was the right decision.

So What?

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Rafael Nadal and I would never miss his games whenever he plays with a top player. Then on a random day, while watching Nadal’s game, I asked myself a question – What do I gain by spending hours of watching Nadal and tennis in general? Apart from the satisfaction of watching Nadal winning, what else do I gain? Absolutely nothing. I will not become a great tennis player by just watching him. He will not share with me his prize money if he wins the tournament. My kung-fu will not improve after watching his game. I will not become famous by supporting Rafa – I’m just one of the million fans. So what is exactly the rationale of me becoming a fan of Rafa? Think properly – None. Only some temporary satisfaction.

Then I realized there are many things that we do everyday which is also pretty much meaningless. Why do people watch TV series? Why do people play computer games or console games? Why do we play sports with friends? Why do people eat snacks? Why do people go to shopping centers and aimlessly walk around? Alcohol? Cigarettes?  Why do I like reading manga and Naruto?

Are there any rationale in the sense it will gives us very clear tangible benefits in indulging these activities?

Alas, I realized all these trivial things that we do everyday is meant to saturate our core instinct.

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>

It was 8.30 PM and while I was waiting for the bus to take me home from my workplace, I saw a huge cockroach on the wall near the bus stop. And then, I saw a lizard moved near the bug and just stared at the gigantic cockroach not doing anything as if knowing the cockroach is too huge to be taken down. Then another lizard did the same – just stared and moved around the cockroach and left. The cockroach is obviously too huge for both of the lizards.

Hence, I was wondering – Why didn’t both of the lizards cooperate and work together to take down the cockroach?

Immediately I imagined, what would lions do if there is a big fat bull standing right in front of them? The lions would have gangbanged and take down the bull together. What would chimpanzees do when they spot a threat? Either they would run away together or would attack the threat together. What would human being do when we face a global crisis? All nations would come together to create a solution for the problem. And this element of cooperation is obviously missing in lizards, and generally reptiles. Why? Why can’t lizards understand the idea of working together?

Because they are not evolved enough … eureka ~

Therefore, this brought me a realization that Evolution works by having a sort of hierarchy in Life, which the rule of thumb is – Life Evolve from Simplicity to Complexity

Origin of Life

I believe Life is a natural force, as natural as the force of gravity and electromagnetism which happens all around the universe. In other words, life is everywhere, governed by the force of Evolution, just like how gravity and light are governed by the law of physics. The degree of how complex life can be is heavily depending on how conducive the environment is. For instance, we can only find microorganism in Mars, perhaps some fishes/sea creatures in Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons (though just a hypothesis) and human being on Earth.

The more essential elements available in a planet such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon (and others that can be found in periodic table), the more conducive the environment will be. The more conducive the environment is, the more capacity it allows life to evolve. And Earth seems like a nice little place for complex life to flourish.

All life started out being equal … first we have several microorganism around, then over a short period of time, microorganism multiply exponentially. And keep on multiply and multiply. Since resources are scarce, microorganism will thrive on evolving to gain upper hand advantage when competing with other microorganism. Therefore, Evolution is basically a natural way of the nature in maintaining a balance world where resources are scarce. Over time, some microorganism will evolve to be bigger, hence giving itself advantage over other microorganism which did not evolve and remain small. And this struggle will go on and on where microorganism will keep evolving to gain advantage over one another. When the Evolution reaches a complex stage, the microorganism will evolve to have legs. When organism have legs and could walk around, it will create an upper hand advantage over other life form which could not move. Hence, that’s what we categorize as Insect today. Basically, the hierarchy as I see it:

Microorganism –> Insect –> Fish –> Reptiles/Amphibians –> Mammal –> Humanity –> A.I. (Singularity)

To acquire certain trait, a creature need to climb the Evolution ladder, which is totally out of their control because Evolution is a game of probability. It’s a fate. It is out of the creatures hand. In other words, human being is not special. Individuals are not unique. We are all just a bunch of creatures trapped in the game of Evolution ruled by the law of probabilities. In the realm of probabilities, luck and chances play a prominent role in our life. Which means – Life is never Fair. You cannot argue how the cockroach lurking in my room, which will eventually be exterminated by my mum is born luckier than I do. You cannot argue how people born in rural Africa, a place of poverty-stricken, starvation and plagued by disease are luckier than people who are born in the western country where they get to eat hamburgers everyday. You cannot argue how a person with retarded mind living in the mental hospital all life long is luckier than Albert Einstein who is acknowledged as a genius and will be remembered forever by history for his mental ability.

I believe there is a reason why Nature allow imbalance to exist. I have not give much thought on this yet but I think perhaps it is something like the concept of man and woman – Both genders are very different from each other, yet bringing balance to the nature at the same time.

Is Imbalance important to bring balance to the nature?

Psychology of the Creatures

Let’s use back the cockroach vs. lizards as example. Let’s examine the differences between these two creatures’ psychology in the way how they react to potential danger. When I was young, I have this thought that cockroach is afraid of people because it seems that whenever I chase a cockroach, it will run away frantically just like how birds and cats do. Only recently I realized that cockroach actually do not react to human being rather, they react to movements and light. (I was sitting still on the chair and saw a cockroach moving towards me, oblivious of my existence. When I flashed a bright light, it ran away and hid at a dark spot.)

Hence, it brought me a realization that insects do not have the emotion of fear – just like a mosquito biting me without having the awareness that I have the capability to kill it by just a single move. So, it is pretty obvious that insects were evolved and programmed in the mind with simple instructions to explore the environment and survive based on their own inert function without having any emotions.

How about lizards on the other hand? I would say they have emotions because lizards react to people. They run away and hide when human is nearby. Lizards recognize human as threat.  Unlike insects, lizards (and reptiles) have bones and organs which is essential in having a higher level of mind and body. Therefore, lizards is one notch higher than insect. Yes, just one notch because apparently mammals are more complex than reptiles.

Reptile are solitary animals who live and hunt alone. Once reptiles lay the eggs, they leave them alone. Compared that to mammals which generally take care of their youngs and live in groups. A group of zebra staying and running together to confuse the tiger. A pack of dogs using wind and body odor to hunt for prey. Birds using flocking technique to be more efficient in foraging. Monkeys living in a social lifestyle where reciprocity plays a huge role in the relationship between the ‘tribe’. Living in group or socially definitely has an upper hand over solitary lifestyle.

But above all these, we have human being, which is on top of the pyramid, taking charge of the world. This imbalance which I mentioned earlier is what creates diversity. And this diversity is what creates the ecology and food chain. True, it is so much more miserable to be born as a cockroach but it will serve the purpose from ecology point of view – get eaten by bigger animals.

By analyzing the pattern of animal’s behaviours, I hypothesized there’s a correlation between traits of animal behaviours and the level of how evolved the creature is. The more evolved the creature is, the more complex it becomes. The more complex it becomes, the more sophisticated survival techniques it will deploy. And this variety of survival techniques is what created the existing diversity of life that we can find on Earth.

Future of Humanity

At the moment, the pinnacle of Evolution would certainly be human being as we are the only species which have deep consciousness and intelligence. But if you think human being has reach the very peak, then you’re wrong – human’s mind is still rapidly evolving. I truly believe there will come a day when humanity will evolve out of our tribal instincts in the future and become more cohesive in our thoughts and ideas. Among the list:

1. Extreme thoughts such as sectarianism, fundamentalism, and racism will slowly fade away from humanity. (The acceptance of Barack Obama as president)

2. Global scale war among nations will cease. (It has been 65 years since a major war erupted). Human being is starting to value peace more.

3. Humanity will become more and more secular and will slowly disassociate ourselves with God, religion and irrational beliefs. (The rise of secular and free thinking movements)

4. This is a controversial belief of mine – Backward nations, like countries in Africa, will become more and more of a laggard because generally, the mind of the people there is slightly less evolved (in micro scale) compared to people in advanced countries. (The stagnancy of Africa countries)

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By the way, I got this from my all time favourite philosophical movie – The Matrix. Pretty insightful.

I like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species (human being) and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammals on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we … are the cure – Agent Smith to Morpheus.

I like the thoughts on natural equilibrium. How did human being destroy the equilibrium? Deforestation, overhunting of animals to extinction, garbage, constructions and development which pollute the world, wastage of resources, etc.

The Angel and Devil

Buddha said the only path to enlightenment is through meditation because meditation unlocks our mind and allow our consciousness to flow freely. Therefore when we meditate, we should focus on Emptiness/Nothingness. Think about nothing, stop your inner voice or the chatterbox in your head from telling you things and concentrate on empty space. This form of concentration is the highest level of concentration because by default, our mind is already wired from the start to dwell in the past and worry about the future. Therefore, to think of nothing is extremely difficult because it defies the way how the mind is hardwired.

A typical person’s chatterbox is extremely noisy. The voice in your head keep telling you what to do for tomorrow, keep commenting on your colleague’s attitude, keep worrying about next month’s income, keep craving for party and alcohol sessions, keep thinking of ‘how nice if I could turn back time’ and etc. It keeps telling and reminding you of what to do.

Based on my understanding, I divide our human mind into 2 different entities. We basically have the inner voice which creates our Persona a.k.a Alter Ego, and YOU the neutral one. Something like Donald Duck’s with his angel and devil in his head.

The angel and devil in our head are not separate entity, but together, they are one. Depending on situations or circumstances, either the angel or devil will be your dominant force in your head and instruct you on how you should think. The YOU is basically a puppet influenced by these two forces, just like a weak emperor manipulated by his advisers and ministers. I will give you an example.

When we see a man hit the table at a restaurant with anger, our mind will automatically label that person as ‘rude’ or ‘bad tempered’. But wait a minute, we have yet to know the real reason why the man furiously hit the table, but our mind has already determined that he is rude. Where does this thought come from? That’s right, it’s from your ‘devil’ inner voice, your presuppose knowledge, or cached thoughts, whatever you call it. However, if we get to learn that the man’s wife just passed away, we will immediately understand his frustration and by an instant, we start to sympathize with him and will not label his as rude anymore. Our ‘angel’ inner voice has become more dominant now in this situation now.

All these emotional turmoil were not caused by you. It was your inner Angel and Devil who directed how you should think and how your emotion should go. It is as though there’s a system or a structure in your head which acts like a framework for the Angel and Devil to conduct the emotional calculation.

IF A Man Hit The Table In A Restaurant, ACTIVATE Devil’s Voice

THEN Tell Ronn That This Guy Is Rude via Chatterbox

BECAUSE We Are Being Emotionally Threatened By His Aggressive Behaviour

THEREFORE We WIll ‘Cook Reasons’ For Ronn To Avoid Him And Increase Vigilance Against Him

then after learning the real reason …

<INPUT> The Man’s Wife Just Pass Away,

DEACTIVATE Devil’s Voice AND ACTIVATE Angel’s Voice

THEN Tell Ronn That This Guy Is Pitiful via Chatterbox

BECAUSE We Don’t Feel Threatened Anymore

AND We Need To Give Good Impression To The Society

THEREFORE We Will ‘Cook’ Reasons’ For Ronn to Sympathize Him And Console Him To Make Ourselves Look Concerned (Although the Devil doesn’t give a damn about the dead wife).

Buddha, recognizing the concept of Persona and Alter Ego said the only way to escape this ‘suffering’ is to control your mind instead of letting the mind control you.

It is easier said than done because most people will say – ‘Look, I have self control! I will resist the addiction of alcohol, resist the temptation of buying expensive gadgets, and resist my bad habit of procrastination. See, I’m controlling my mind!’ Yes, that indeed show some self control, but not a hint of controlling the mind yet because our desire and emotion is still floating around. It is only when we could totally relinquish and unattached ourselves from desires and emotions then we could proclaim that we have controlled the mind, which at the end, you don’t say ‘I resist’ but to say ‘I understand’. Again, it is not easy for anyone to fully control the mind because it defies the way how our mind is hardwired (with emotions and desires).

Unleash the Suppressed

One day, Ronn pays a visit to Aunty Nnor’s home to meet up with her. Aunty Nnor then cook dinner for him, and in the dining table they have dinner together.

Aunty Nnor : Ronn, how is the food?

Ronn: *takes a scoop and taste the food*

Devil : Yuck! The food is horrible! Ronn, tell her in the face that the food suck so that she could improve her cooking better next time. Do it like a man just like how Gordon Ramsay always do.

Angel : No, Ronn! You can’t be impolite. She spent some effort to cook for you, so you need to show at least a little appreciation.

Devil : Ronn, tell her the food sucks and you will have given a good reason to her to escape this horrible meal for the night. Don’t tell me you gonna finish up this whole pile of crap?

Angel : You have to finish up your food no matter how bad it taste. Or else, she will think that you’re being rude and will not cook for you next time anymore, and that’s not really nice.

Ronn : Yeah, the food is fine. I like it.

Of course, typically there are not so much voices in our head while thinking of a reply as Ronn had in the interaction above. But as I’ve said, our mind appears to have an emotional calculator where every input is calculated in a flash. The mind then basically weigh both side of the argument and you will carry out the action which the more dominant voice commanded. In this scenario, Ronn was influenced by the Angel’s voice and give a politically correct response rather than telling blatant truth as he was afraid of offending Aunty Nnor. Hence, the devil’s voice is suppressed and the angel’s voice became his Persona and Alter Ego. And consciously, or unconsciously, Ronn is just an observer throughout the experience, like a puppet being swayed left and right by the Angel and Devil.

A vice versa situation could also take place where the Devil suppress Ronn’s Angel voice, and the Devil will become Ronn’s alter ego and criticize Aunty Nnor’s cooking like a food critic. (although it is very unlikely as human being are wired to rely on good image and impression to interact and communicate with each other.)

It is pretty clear to me that human being are nothing but just a puppet to the collective neurons, cells created by the force of Evolution for survival and reproduction purposes.

I have digressed long enough, and now I will get back to the main point and explain the question in my previous post on why people seemingly become bad and evil right before achieving the state of Emptiness in meditation. That’s because once you are about to achieve the state of Emptiness, the suppression system will no longer work well. You will indiscriminately unleash all your suppressed words and feelings by the Angel and Devil to other people, without holding back.

The reason why it seems there’s a tendency for people to be more evil is because if we bother to examine our mind, there are more instances where our Angel suppress the Devil in our mind than the other way round. But as I have said, we will unleash these suppressed feelings indiscriminately, just that due to statistics factor, it seems we are more likely to unleash badness than goodness.

For instance:

Mr. A who was abused during his childhood and suppressed the hatred inside him for years will unleash this hatred without holding back when he is about to achieve Emptiness.

Mr. B who has extremely high libido and suppressed his sexual urge for years will unleash his sexual urge without holding back like sex maniac when he is about to achieve Emptiness.

Miss C who has the habit of picking her nose but was suppressed by her family member will unleash back her bad habit without holding back when she is about to achieve Emptiness.

So how do people overcome this problem? The answer is Acceptance – accepting the fact that YOU are the Devil. Accepting the fact that you are capable of doing evil things or walking the wrong path. The problem always begin when people are in denial of their own weakness. Take for example Mr. A. He unleashes his hatred around but at the same he keeps refusing to accept the fact that the Devil is himself. He tried to suppress the feeling of hatred back to this brain, but unfortunately the suppressing system is not working anymore in the state of Emptiness. He is helpless about it and the feeling will be the same as possessed by a Devil. And then he meditates more hoping to cure the problem, but he will only find himself to depress and unleash more and more of his weakness. That’s exactly how a person could turn crazy from deep meditation without being guided by experts. The solution is either he goes all the way to achieve Acceptance in himself or stop meditating all together.

(Now, I begin to understand the reason why Keanu Reeves, who portrayed as the Buddha in the movie Little Buddha, pulled the Devil out of the water and said something along the lines “I was You and You were Me, but now you’re an illusion” before He was Enlightened, which I find pretty hard to understand at first).

So, how the interaction between Aunty Nnor and Ronn will turn out if Ronn is able to control his mind from the Angel and Devil?

Aunty Nnor : Ronn, how is the food?

Ronn : We eat because we’re hungry. It does not matter if the food is good or bad, as long as it fills our stomach healthily, I’m satisfied.

Ronn utter those words without the influence of Angel and Devil. Here, Ronn essentially Understand and Accept that his desire on tasty food is just an illusion. There will no longer be any Angel or Devil’s voices in his head as he has fully controlled them.

The idea of achieving Emptiness is to free ourselves from the grasp of the Angel and Devil inside us and becoming back Ourself. The original YOU. Because when you essentially master the art of Emptiness, and Accept the Devil in YOU, you will realize all the things a typical human being chase – money, glory, fame, change-the-world, love, good impression etc. are nothing but an illusion chased by the Angel and Devil in your head. The real YOU wants nothing but to live contently without any cravings.

As I have said in my previous post, this is what separates animals and human being. Animals live their life purely following the voices in their head and human being, for most part, do the same too. However, we are aware of the existence of these voices and could do something to defy the Angel and Devil in our head.

PS: The Angel and Devil in our head is just a metaphorical way of me explaining how human Persona and Alter Ego work. It’s difficult to draw the line between goodness and badness as usually there are not only two opposing forces but there are perhaps three, four or more forces which creates the complicated thinking structure in our mind. But to keep things as simple as possible, I will just use Angel and Devil to portray two contradicting forces in this essay.

PPS: So, how do a person who meditates know when he/she achieve Emptiness? It is when he is trapped in pure emptiness without a single thought going through in his mind and could not be interfered by external environment like noise. Just like when we are sleeping, mild level of volume mostly likely will not wake us up. Same goes for deep meditation where people will not be distracted by mild level of noise and interruptions.

PPPS: This is how the conversation between Buddha and the Devil in the Little Buddha went:

*Buddha pulled Devil who disguised as Buddha out of the water*

Devil: You who go where no one else will dare .. Will you be my God?

Buddha : Architect, finally I have met you. You will not rebuild your house again.

Devil : But I am your house. And you live in me.

Buddha : O’ lord of my own ego. You are pure illusion. You do not exist. The earth is my witness.

*Devil vanishes*

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." – Emo Phillips, comedian.

We all now that all kind of dogs can be trained to be obedient and faithful to their owners. You can teach specific instructions to dogs and also shaping their behaviour. Nevertheless, we should never forget that although we can teach and train dogs, each of every different breed of dog has a different core instinct.

For instance, if I walk on the street and meet a stray Pit Bull Terrier, I know there’s a chance that it may attack me, even if it’s just a small chance (pit bull is the most common breed of dog to attack human). But instead, if I encounter a stray Chihuahua, I know for sure, with 99.999% certainty, that it will never attack me.

Although both Pit Bull and Chihuahua are dogs, their core behaviour and personality are wired differently from the beginning – Basically, different origin of Instinct (powered by Evolution). If between dogs’ behaviour already have such disparity, what more if compared with other species of animal?

The Brain

Animals have different core instincts, unique to every species, or even maybe to sub-species or perhaps up to individual species. But If someone ever ask the question – what’s the one major difference between human being and animals, the answer is clear – Consciousness.

Eliezer has written a very nice short essay about about how the brain thinks, titled – Cached Thoughts. I will briefly summarize what the essay is about (The essay is worth a read, really).

• A typical human brain is only as powerful as a 200Hz computer processor, which is ridiculously weak.
• The trick of how our brain manage to execute and run complicated task with this ‘weak processor’ is through a mechanism called ‘caching’.
• In computing, that’s when you store the results of previous operations and look them up next time, instead of recomputing them from scratch. It works similarly in the human brain too.
• This caching method is extremely useful, as we could analyze and solve problems using past experience or some presuppose knowledge as reference.
• But looking from a conscious mind point of view, cached thoughts have a significant downside too – acting without questioning.

The Instinct

Animals live their lives purely following on their instinct. When they are hungry, they look for food. When they feel threaten, they attack. When they are sleepy, they sleep. All these programmed instincts are already well stored in their cached thoughts and basically, animals act up according to what their brain instruct them depending on circumstances. In other words, animals let the brain to complete the pattern and they will just repeat their routine over and over again.

When a tiger is provoked, its emotion of anger lights up, courtesy of cached thoughts, and the tiger will react and fight back to defend itself. A tiger will not ask questions like “Is this fellow a joke? Bah, I don’t wanna waste my time dealing with this moron”.

They will just bite.

Well, if you think that human being is unique because we do not have such ‘automatic instinct’ because we seems ‘consciously’ able to choose our actions, then you’re wrong – We also do have the same ‘programmed instinct’. And this is the same reason why racism and sexism exist, inferiority complex behaviour is common, tendency to be biased when making argument, office politics, first impression matters, cultural taboos, believing in God and many other things which once rationally thought out, seems pointless or obsolete. Most people simply absorb information from external world and then allow the brain to complete the pattern.

Don’t let your mind complete the pattern!  Think! – Eliezer

Nevertheless, due to our higher consciousness, we could actually realize and question our instinct, and this is what separates human and animal. Human has the capacity to ask the question – “Why did I lost my temper just now? Should I not lost my cool so easily? OK, I will be nice next time.” With this, the next time I’m provoked again, I will suppress my anger and thoughts and restrict my emotions from bursting away. This suppression, over long of period of time will turn to repression. There are also times when people are aware of the shortcoming of their instinct but choose to avoid doing anything about it or helpless about it. eg. depression problems.

(Buddhism called this as ‘animal instinct’ and Buddha said, the only way to get rid or unattached ourselves with this instinct is through vigorous meditation. Only then, we will attain enlightenment, the highest order of consciousness)

When a frog is hopping around to chase a grasshopper, which is also hopping away to escape from the frog, human being will find it amusing to watch this hopping battle on ‘who-can-hop-better’. But it’s kinda sadistic because thinking from the frog and grasshopper point of view it must be an intense experience. One is a hungry beast looking for its first meal of the day and another hopping away from the monster to save itself.

The instinct involved is a matter of life and death for the frog and grasshopper, but for human it’s an amusement simply because we have a higher level of consciousness and could see the humour side of it. However, if this same person get chased by a tiger, his consciousness will revert back to the basic instinct and the first thing he will do is to run away and escape from the monster, just like what the grasshopper did.

There was a bird, a Common Myna (picture), which used to sleep on the awning outside my room window. Every morning, the bird punctually wakes up around 6.45 AM and then will start ‘singing’… very loudly. Well I suppose it’s pretty nice to have a morning call by the little bird before going to classes but when it comes to weekends, its pretty nightmarish and downright annoying. 

Common Myna are pretty smart and aggressive. It’s the only breed of birds in the urban areas which dare to stand up and fight against the ‘big bully’ crows. There was once I witnessed a little battle between a crow and common myna over a piece of food on the dustbin (while I was in the bus-stop waiting for bus) and the myna won. Even crows are not comfortable with human but this myna have the guts to sleep just outside my room (on the awning of my window). But these days, I rarely see it around my house anymore.

(BTW, I actually like reading a Singaporean bird-watching blog).

I noticed that Common Myna always make a high pitched noise and fly away every time I chased it away, something which goes like “Prvvvee-eeeet”. And I wondered why do they make such a habit of making this ‘Prvvee-eeet’ noise while flying away?

The more I think of it, the more I realized it must have something to do with alerting danger to other birds around it. Just like when crows hear the sound of gunfire, they will immediately caw and make the ‘ahhkkk ahhkkk’ noise and fly away in groups. I suppose many breeds of birds have this same habit of alerting danger to their own brethren.

But I just can’t get this out of my mind – The bird was always alone every time I chased it away, so who was there for it to alert to? I didn’t had any answer. And so, I pended my curiosity.

Few weeks ago, while sitting comfortably in front of my computer and doing some reading, I heard a loud and sharp shriek from my neighbour. And I right away speculated the reason – “Haha, she must have been frightened by a flying cockroach!”. Then the next question came to my mind – “ Why do girls usually shriek whenever they are frightened?  Guys usually do not usually shriek but nevertheless make some noise when frightened too.

Few seconds later, it’s as if someone magically knocked some answers to my head and I went “Aha! Psychological Glitch!”. And then I thought of the Myna bird and repeated “Aha! Psychological Glitch!”.

Understanding Evolutionary Psychology.

Before I can go on to explain Psychological Glitch, we first need to know some basic about Evolutionary Psychology first. Genes are responsible of playing the Evolution game in creating who we are today. Similarly, the genes play a major role in constructing our brain so that we, the human and the animals, will have a sense of coherency between our psychology and our body ability. For instance, the bull will know how to use its horn to attack foes and enemies. If the bull has horn but do not have the motivation to use it, then what’s the purpose of the horn then? Something needs to tell the bull to utilize its horn when fighting – And the psychology will basically play the major role in triggering such actions.

One of the false presupposed view we have regarding the nature is that survival of life is pretty straight forward. Well, this delusion is not surprising as most of us do not get our hands dirty to hunt or search for food anymore. Thanks to our intelligence and advanced civilization, many of us have the luxury to just sit around and get our food by literally, without lifting a finger. All we need is money – I pay, I eat, and I’m satisfied.

Similarly, we often apply this similar presuppose view to the animal kingdom – that survival is something very straight forward. The spider eats the ant, the frog eats the spider, the snake eats the frog and the mongoose eats the snake and then the cycle repeats again. Well in some sense, this view is correct but nevertheless pretty one dimensional. We often overlook the idea of ‘Struggle’ when it comes to the survival in the animal kingdom. It’s a struggle which not many of us could perceive with clarity.

Eliezer made a very interesting point over here:

Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits.  Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes.  Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind? ….

… By now we all know the punchline:  You just say "evolution". -  Eliezer Yudkowsky from the article The Alien God.

Rehearse the quote over and over again and you will see the idea of struggling in a much better view. I will give you an example of a struggle in the animal kingdom.

The Asian Giant Hornet (Vespa Mandarinia) has extremely strong resistant to bee stings. This creature is beyond Rambo when it comes to killing bees – A single Giant Hornet alone is capable of wiping out an entire European Honeybee’s colony (which consist of around 10,000-30,000 bees).. And not many other animals could withstand the strength of this bug and it is as if Vespa Mandarinia is the king of the insect world. However, there’s only one species in the animal kingdom which could subdue Vespa Mandarinia, obviously besides human being – The Japanese Honeybees. Watch this fascinating 3 minutes video below.

I really do felt awe after watching this. So, I was thinking, if the Giant Hornet could evolved and gain a little ability to withstand higher temperature, then the Japanese Honeybees are pretty much screwed. But maybe the honeybee would have also evolved to counter the counter-evolved ability. A beautiful struggle.

Both European Honeybees and Japanese Honeybees shared the same ancestors. But why does one whole colony get slaughtered by a Rambo-bug and another have such sophisticated idea to take the giant warrior? To be honest, I do not know in detail how the Japanese Honeybees could gain such unique ability or idea. But I think its a safe assumption that both European and Japanese Honeybees started out being defenseless against hornets until one day, the Japanese Honeybee discovered that they could deploy such tactic to take down the hornet, just like how the first human being initially discovering on how to write.

The ultimate point of me talking about birds, foxes, rabbits, and bees is that Evolution and Psychology works hand in hand. Our brain, together with animals’ brain is NOT something which was born empty and its up to us to fill things in it. Rather, our brain and our psychology is entirely evolved and built up by our genes. There is a structure that determine the psychology of every species. This is what divides the psychology of, for example, a lizard which will leave the eggs alone once laying them and a bird which will remain taking care of the young after hatching.

The Imperfectness Of Human’s Psyche.

Human being lived in a hunter-gatherer society, presumably around 10,000 years ago in which human lived within a social group and inherently, placed certain priority towards ensuring the prosperity of the social group. Therefore, when certain situation arise which might bring danger or threat to the group, these people will make loud noise to alert everyone within the social group so that they would take notice and prepare to defend themselves. Human mind has already been programmed to instinctively react accordingly depending on situations, just like the Japanese honeybees moving their wings and body for coordination to take down the Giant Hornet.

So, how did the hunter-gatherer people judge when or not to make loud noise and alert the social group? Actually, they do not have a rational judgment at all on making the decision to make loud noise – it’s all instinctive reactions triggered by the emotion of fright and fear.

Fast forward to 10,000 years later, human being no longer lives in a hunter-gatherer society but in a little more complicated civilization. Nevertheless, we still do carry our basic instinct with us – same instincts, different environment. Therefore girls who have Blattodephobia (phobia of cockroach), will shriek and scream when seeing a cockroach flying around as triggered by the emotion of freight and fear. But its not like the cockroach will kill anyone physically (in an immediate sense), so why do some human, even some men scream when seeing them? Not only that, perhaps the intention of screaming is to alert the family members (to help getting rid of the cockroach) but don’t forget, we also do scream while being alone when nobody could help us.

Therefore, all these already prove that there’s certain glitch in our psyche. If you think screaming when being frightened and fearful is something universal which applies to all living creature, try chasing down a cat and tell me whether will they go shriek and go ‘”Miaaaaaaaaaowwwwwwwwwwww !!~” or not. I’ve personally experiment frightening cats when I was a kid and they don’t make any noise at all … it’s obvious since cats are solitary animal who do not live socially – there’s no purpose of making noise while running away, unlike human being and birds which live in groups.

Shrieking due to phobia of cockroaches is just one of the many psychological glitches that we have.

In my post Subconscious Survival, I’ve already highlighted 2 everyday psychological glitches that we frequently experienced but do not really pay much attention to – girls beautify themselves with cosmetic and our obsession with food which delights our taste bud such as chocolate, ice-cream and candy.

Another good example would be sex. I wanted to put it in my own words, but I thought R. Dawkins put it really well, so I will just quote him here –

An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual’s psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale. Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion.

Several posts ago, I’ve written how human being are so altruistic towards animals. The reason is simple – we have a soft spot for innocence and helplessness. The root of this emotion is purposely to make human being to like and take care of children and the young ones within the social group. Imagine if a husband and wife thinking rationally rather than emotionally when it comes to weighing the pros and cons of having a baby – how can they justify their time and resources on a baby that they could be spent on other more constructive things? Heck, they wouldn’t even have gone into a marriage in the first place as having a spouse is kind of a ‘burden’ too. Therefore, with this programmed emotion of having altruism towards innocence and helplessness, human being inherently love and care for the young ones. Only with emotional-thinking, human being will have the motivation to spend more than 20 years of dedication to raise up and parenting the children and doing it without expecting any reward or return.

When it comes to animals especially domestic animals, we also do view them as ‘innocent’ and ‘helpless’ because subconsciously we know that these are submissive animals which will not hurt us human being. Hence, when it comes to a situation when we encounter helplessness for example hungry puppies or an injured bird or a pack of dogs chasing down a cat, then this emotion is triggered and we will have the urge to save or protect them.

The word glitch may sound as if all these are critical issues and needed to be ‘fixed’. But actually I’m only interested in finding the origin of human emotions and behaviors and not at all critiquing the scenarios above. I’m not ever going to hold on to the belief that we should live a literal life, for instance, believing girls should not beautify themselves with cosmetic because its a delusion. That’s equivalent of saying music is just a wave of sound with different frequency – in some sense its true, but life would be void of any artistic purpose if we choose to live that way. And the word glitch may sound as if it’s something bad, but actually it’s not. The word glitch merely implies a lack of consistency between the purposes and functions of certain cognitive area within our psyche.

(Out of topic : I just saw a documentary of Koko the gorilla which was trained to learn human sign language many years ago. But several years later, the project was defunded and then they placed Koko in a habitat at California. 14 years later, one of Koko’s former trainers visited the habitat for some project, and Koko went over to the trainer and in sign language asked – ‘Where did you go’?

Another ape with similar intelligence is the Orangutan Chantek – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantek (worth reading)

The Great Apes – Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Orangutans and Human Being.)

(Updated content in brown) 

We can do as we will, but cannot will as we will – Schopenhauer, philosopher.

I have written before that our intelligence is inborn. I have written recently that our moral values, to some extent, is also inborn. Now, how about our personality, behaviour and our beliefs? Are they also inborn? It’s controversial, but my personal answer is yes.

But a mere yes means nothing. I will put fourth various arguments to support why my view is correct. So, digest the essence of my arguments properly. Here we go..

Studies of identical twins who were separated at birth and then tested in adulthood, showed that they have astonishing similarities. And this happened in every pair of identical twins separated at birth in every study, much less so with paternal twins separated at birth. My favourite example is a pair of twins, one of whom was brought up as a Catholic in a Nazi family in Germany, the other was brought up in a Jewish family in Trinidad. When they walked in to the lab in Minnesota, they were wearing identical navy blue shirt with <?> , both of them like to dip butter toast in coffee, both of them kept rubber-band around their wrist, both of them flush the toilet before using it as well as after, and both of them like to surprise people by sneezing in crowded elevator to watch them jump. – Steven Pinker, Cognitive Scientist. (from TED)

[I recommend you to click on the link and watch the video, if you are interested to learn of the delusion of being politically-correct]

This is indeed significant because it implies that if I could be 100% perfectly cloned, thus creating Ronn-B, and this Ronn-B is placed in some tribal village in Africa, chances are that the original Ronn, who lives in Malaysia and Ronn-B  in Africa, will have a very similar personality. I think this is a significant hint that our personality is not really affected by environment but rather, it is somehow fixed.

Influenced by family and friends?

Just observe any family which have 2 or more sons (or 2 daughters) and you will notice many times, the 2 brothers (or 2 sisters) do not share similar personality and behaviour despite being raised by the same parent.  Perhaps, one of them is more ambitious while the another is more laid-back. Or maybe one is more reserved and introverted and another is more outgoing and extroverted.

They were raised in the same home by the same parents for years but why such difference exist? My answer is clear – contrary to popular beliefs, personality and behaviour is not largely learnt from the environment, (though it still play some role) but rather is an inborn one, largely influenced by our genetics.

And you may ask – Isn’t it obvious that the brothers or sisters have different group of friends, hence, different lifestyle? Maybe the older brother’s group of friends are party-goer and outgoing people, and that’s why he too became outgoing  while the younger brother is a geeky guy because he was surrounded by geeky people, therefore creating disparity in personality between the two.

Yes, it is very easy to think what you are today is the product of the environment around you. But what if it is not the environment who chose you but rather you chose the environment? In other words, your close friends are NOT a group of people who you just ‘fatedly encounter during the course of your life’ but it was YOU who, consciously or unconsciously, chose people who you can get along  with your personality or lifestyle comfortably well, mix with them and then label them as ‘close/great/best friends’. While for people you are not really interested with, they will just remain a normal or a hi-bye friend.

Examine your thoughts. Reflect back the earlier chapter of your life and think back on how you chose your close friends and you will realize my words have some essence of truth. You and your best friends must have many things in common, or else, it will be extremely difficult to even become a friend.

If so, what you are today is not really influenced by the environment around you. You are what you are supposed to be, largely determined by your genes, since the day you were born.

The Structure of the Mind

Many months ago, I read an article of a guy who sustained brain damage in an accident. Before the accident, this guy is a typical nice guy – a gentleman, polite and well-mannered. However, after that unfortunate accident, his personality changed due to the damage to his frontal lobe which deals with emotions. He became hot-tempered, impatient (short attention span) and impulsive. He is now an entirely different person.

In other words, this man did not choose to have such personality … it was the brain damage which altered the structure of his brain which had affected his normal emotions and he is now powerless to revert back to his former self.

In another instance,  Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, related a story of hers when she got a stroke several years ago on the left side of her brain. Her entire left hemisphere was totally shut down and guess what happened? She couldn’t recognize alphabets and numbers although she was sure she knows about it. All she saw was some ‘alien symbols’. When on the phone calling for doctor, she only hear gibberish voices like “uh oh uh ah”. As the left hemisphere of her brain was shut down, so as the brain region which deals with language. There’s absolutely nothing she can do about it.

Try to imagine how it is like if you were in her shoes. That will be a really strange experience, isn’t it?

These are the extreme examples of ‘you-can’t-do-anything-with-your-brain’ scenario. But this is true even in lesser extent in the sense of our personality.

Puberty is perhaps the best example to illustrate my point here. First, we have to know that our brain does not stop developing until around mid-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.

Parents will usually teach and give advice to their teenage kids, telling them what is the right thing to do and what is not right to do. But often, many words and advices given went to the left ear and gone out at the right ear. This is because, a typical teenagers brain’s structure is not developed enough to understand the essence of their parent’s message. For instance, they can’t understand why their parents keep insisting that smoking is bad for health when many adults are doing it, therefore in these teenage kids’ mind, smoking can’t be wrong. By letting the brain completing the pattern, they came to the conclusion that they’re right and their parents are wrong because of being old-fashioned and stubborn. This is the result of lacking in ability to see the big pictures – just like the ancient people thought the flat world was the truth until disproven later by sophisticated astronomical techniques and mathematics.

So, this gives a very clear view to us that many times, the experience and wisdom of parents is totally rejected by teenage kids for one ultimate reason – the structure of the developing mind in teenagers do not have such capacity to allow them to see from their parents point of view, hence the rebellious nature.

And for the same reason, I will say religious people couldn’t see atheist’s rational point of view of a world without God because their mind do not allow them to view a world void of divine being. Similarly, you can’t call a crazy guy to calm down, because his mind’s structure will not understand the necessity or purpose of calming down.

In the book God’s Debris by Scott Adams, he said this:

“People think they follow advice but they don’t. Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don’t waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do.” – Scott Adams.

I find this pretty meaningful because it means that every input we received is subjected to individual interpretation and bias. When your father tells you that “You should study hard and get good results!”, you may heed his advice because you understand the value of education. Or maybe not, because you don’t see any purpose of scoring well in the exam papers. Everyone has an unique internal structure to interpret this ‘information’.

Or perhaps, you study hard because your father threaten to cut down your pocket money if you don’t score well. In this case, this is not a teaching which brings ‘enlightenment’ in your mind but only a form of repression in forcing yourself to study.

What Is The Environment’s Role?

There are people who were raised up in a religious family but doubted religion and became a non-believer in their later life. There are people who were raised up in a non-believing family but chose to become a believer in their later life. There are people who remain a non-believer. There are people who remain a believer.

Why so? In this age of information, isn’t it that we are exposed to the same amount of information on religion and atheism? But why does one group chose this path and another group chose the other one?

Actually, they did not choose. They just went back to the path which their mind wants to belong to -The path which their mind are structured to fit in, the beliefs that they are comfortable with.

From what I can see, the role of the environment is merely playing the Repressing and Boosting game to individuals. I will give you an instance.

Sarah is a typical shy and reserved girl. One day, her friend Jenny decided to introduce some friends who are outgoing to Sarah. After a period of socializing, Sarah seem to became more outgoing and befriend these people.

Here, there are two possibilities of Sarah’s origin of personality.

1. Sarah grown up in a repressed environment (eg. super conservative family) where she didn’t have much opportunity to go socializing with people. Despite Sarah seemingly ‘learnt’ socializing skills, the fact is, she didn’t. She just discovered that her true-self is an outgoing social animal and she completely enjoys the experience. She has now break free from repression.

2. Whatever the environment Sarah grown up at, she is actually a true introverted girl. When she first befriended the people, Sarah boosted her personality just for that occasion, got out of the comfort zone, and went on to socialize with them. However, the fact remains that she is a true introvert, which means in the future, she will feel the same awkwardness feeling when getting to know new friends. 

The word repression may sound like quite an intense emotion. Well, if you think of a killer who is holding a knife and stuck in a dilemma whether or not to murder his victim, then yes, I suppose this degree of repression will be pretty intense. But that’s only the extreme level because we still have to consider the everyday repression which we all experience (but without much questioning).

For example, consider sexual repression. Thousand years ago, pre-marital sex was considered a major taboo and anyone caught engaging such activity will be dealt with heavy punishments (because the country law was fully controlled by religion). However, today as we live in a more secular society, except for certain Islamic country, nobody will get hurt by having pre-marital sex. In some people’s eye, the shift in such culture left a bad impact because it encourages over-openness. But I choose to see it differently – the shift of culture didn’t changed our behaviour, It merely loosen the level of repression in us.

Ethics and Fairness?

One major argument against non-freewill is the so called ‘scary’ thought that if indeed human being do not have free will, therefore people will not take responsible for their actions.

We need to understand that there are two different ways of perceiving the world. One is an idealistic world and another is the reality. Sure, everyone dreams of an utopian world where immorality and injustice are non-existence. Sure, everyone hopes this world will remain peaceful without war. Sure, everyone wants humanity to live on and keep progressing. But all these will remain just an idealism. It is something that we want and hope for, not to be confused with the actual state of the world.

Therefore, to say something which involves the element of deterministic, like for instance, you cannot learn to be more intelligent, it will bound to be controversial because it goes against the idealism of typical human being (most of us will feel insulted if we are labeled stupid). But again, idealism is idealism, reality is reality. If the idea of non-freewill scares you, that’s because it contradicts your ideals and beliefs. The nature or the reality, is always neutral.

Conclusion

When you are lining up in a long queue, it is not right to say – ‘I’m stuck in a long queue’ because, you need to understand that the world do not revolves around you, although it seems like it. Rather, YOU ARE the QUEUE because you, along with many other people, played a part to create the long line of queue. Similarly, we need to throw away the idea that everyone has a rational explanation why they have certain personality, talent, intelligence, beliefs, etc. Free will is an illusion and we have to accept the fact that there are some people who were born luckier and some people born less lucky than the rest. Remember, your genes have more say than your will, hence, we cannot will as we will.

It may seem insignificant at first, but when you shift your perspective from ‘I have thoughts’ to ‘I am the thought’, your whole mind-set of perceiving the reality will change along with it and naturally, you will start to have a better understand of how human being really works.

Ronn : Why do we get lazy? What does Evolutionary Psychology has anything to do with laziness?

Nnor : Laziness is a way to preserve the body from being overworked and conservation of energy in our body. Our biological body needs preservation and conservation, hence the body has worked hand in hand with our brain to wire laziness in our mind. Human by default, are lazy. The only way to overcome it is motivation or reward and punishment. We need to ‘program’ ourselves with reasons to not become lazy.

Ronn : But wait a minute, conservation of energy? Wouldn’t food production be contradictory with the purpose of laziness? Laziness wants us to eat less food but yet today, we are on the verge of global food shortage.

Nnor : This is a problem with the world culture, not Evolution, but nevertheless i will tell you why. If you watch plenty of Discovery Channel or National Geographic, you will notice that it is not an easy task for carnivore animals to hunt for a meal as it takes plenty of effort to catch a prey. Thus, the brain induce and give pleasure and good feeling plus creating desire as a form of motivation for the hunter to search for food. Due to this, hunting and eating plays a big part in animal’s instinct.

Same goes for human being.

Do you know that before the industrialization age, unless you are really rich, most people eat to live as you will have to spend plenty of effort to rear or hunt animals to eat? However, with the rise of the age of consumerism and commercialization, food has become commercialized and is mass produced. Instead of hunting for cow and chicken which lives naturally and healthily in the jungle, we are eating meat which are chunked out directly from farms. Hence today, human have taken food for granted and strive more on living to eat instead of eating to live.

As i’ve mentioned many times, the subconscious mind and conscious mind interpret things very differently as they speak two different languages. The subconscious mind by default, is still thinking that food is hard to come by, thus still constantly motivating us to eat. However, consciously human being often eat without thinking twice due to the abundance of food, hence obesity became a global issue at the moment. Therefore, what happens in the outside world couldn’t directly affect Evolution.

I do not know, perhaps Evolution is undergoing a way to make us eat less by reducing the pleasure of eating, or perhaps not. I do not know.

Ronn : Why would Evolution will want to reduce the pleasure of eating?

Nnor : The beauty of Evolution is that it always want to strikes the balance. Takr laziness back as example. Evolution wants to preserve the energy in our body hence, discouraging us to overwork our body. But if everyone remains idle and not doing anything, life will not be able to prolong and continue because then, we will be too lazy to eat, socialize and copulate. Remember Buddha’s Middle Way – the balance is the way to life? Therefore, Evolution also introduces boredom, a horrible feeling which most of us dislike (which motivate us to socialize and do activities together) and pleasure, as a form of motivation to get us moving.

Our brain induce pleasure in order to motivate us to eat, socialize, copulate,  getting things which are hard-to-get, and etc. And our mind give out negative pleasure when things are not going the right way. We feel lonely and miserable when we do not have companions around, we feel angry when someone insulted us, we feel dejected when the person we like rejected our love and etc.

Another funny thing about human pleasure and motivation is – there’s a hierarchy. Remember the time when you crave something so badly that you think about it day and night? However once you get it, and after a few days, this craving will slowly fade away and then you will start to crave for something else which is more valuable or hard to get?

Evolution utilizes emotions to guide the survival of life.  Again, it is not by any means perfect at all. Perhaps it is ugly too. But the most important thing is – It Works.

Ronn : So, by your definition, there’s no such thing as laziness but only lack of motivation?

Nnor : No, laziness do exist but from another perspective it is not how the way we think it is. The word lazy we always describe people is something defined by the society and culture, not Evolution or the natural world.

Let’s ask the question – What Is Laziness? How do you define laziness?  Many people will say laziness is the reluctance to do productive work such as studying, doing homework, working, helping people, etc.

When you only play games instead of studying, your parents will call you lazy. When your peers have started working to build up their careers while you remain idle not doing anything, they will call you lazy.

But if you think carefully, this definition of laziness is actually constructed by society. Not everyone is motivated to study. Not everyone is motivated to work. But the society’s structure DEMANDS you to study and work. If you are not contributing to the society, you’re basically lazy.

Think about it, how can you call me lazy when i’m playing games with my computer instead of studying? I’m busy playing PC games! In this sense, i’m not lazy to study, but just lack of motivation to study. However, society has already presuppose and defined that playing PC games is not good while studying is good, and so if you spend more time in front of the computer than with your books, you’re basically lazy.

My point here is simple – we’re always confused and overlap nature’s laziness and human society’s laziness. We tend to have a misconstrued and presuppose view of laziness and always label it as bad but in fact, it is just one of the element which make us the way we are.

Ronn : Don’t you think laziness is bad? Wouldn’t it bad for humanity if everyone is too lazy to study and work?

Nnor : Bad for human civilization but not for humanity. There’s a difference.  As i have said before, Nature do not discriminate what is right and what is wrong. Human society defined all that.

Back to laziness, in order not to be lazy, self-realization is extremely important – to know and define for yourself what’s important and what’s not. When you are pursuing of doing something you’re truly passionate about, you will not feel tired or bored because the mind will give you a burst of energy and constant motivation. You will not see this passion as just another chore or work but something truly important to yourself. This simple human condition had given birth to many psychology and economic model which involves motivation.

Ultimately, it is up to you. Do you want to define laziness by yourself or are you content to let the society to define it for you?

Kisagotami was a young woman whose first child died suddenly somewhere around his first birthday. Desperate in her love for the child, Kisagotami went from house to house in her village, clasping the dead child to her breast and asking for medicine to revive her son. Most of her neighbors shrank from the sight of her and called her mad, but one man, seeing her inability to accept the reality of her son’s death, directed her to the Buddha by promising her that only he had the medicine she sought. Kisagotami went to the Buddha and pleaded with him for medicine. “I know of some,” he promised. “But I will need a handful of mustard seed from a house where no child, husband, parent, or servant has died.”

Slowly, Kisagotami came to see that hers was not a unique predicament. She put the body of her child down in the forest and returned to the Buddha. “I have not brought the mustard seed,” she told him. “The people of the village told me, ‘The living are few, but the dead are many.”‘ The Buddha replied, “You thought that you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence.”

Kisagotami’s story resonates, not just because of our sympathy for the horror of losing a child or because of our fear of a world in which such tragedy is possible, but because we all, like her, feel that our situation is unique and that our emotional pain requires relief. In the privacy of our own minds, we are aggrieved and single-mindedly self-centered. We still seek absolute gratification that is intolerant of frustration. The Buddha helped Kisagotami find happiness not by bringing her dead child back to life, but by changing her view of herself. The inner development he alludes to is a development beyond the private childish perspective of “me first” that we all secretly harbor.

Source : psychologytoday.com

I particularly like this line “we all feel that our situation is unique” which shows the egocentric mind of ours. Thinking about it, i feel human psychology is a funny thing and i will tell you why.

Consider a student who didn’t do his homework and the teacher asked him why. He will mostly give the answer – “I did not have enough time to finish it up” or  “I did not know how to do” or “I totally forgotten about it” instead of plainly admitting that he is lazy.

Or let’s take another scenario.

The boyfriend broke up with a girl and she was unhappy. When her friends asked her why they broke up, she will mostly say “i realized we are not suitable for each other” or “our relationship is getting dull and boring and time to move on” or “i do not have feeling for him anymore” instead of admitting that he dumped her for another girl.

As i have written before, the subconscious mind operates very differently from the conscious mind. Human psychology work the way it is simply because we are a social animal and it is not a mystery that psychology and evolution are closely linked (evolutionary psychology). Because we are social animals, our psychology is bound by psychological conditions such as peer pressure, cognitive dissonance and psychological bias. (I will write a post about evolutionary psychology + social group psychology soon). From a subconscious mind point of view, being dumped is a horrible thing to happen because it indicates that she is a social outcast as the male prefer other female over her. Same goes for being lazy. People hate to be labeled as lazy because it indicates he/she does not contribute to the society.  The subconscious mind will inherently resist all these negative interpretation and replace it with an ‘artificial ego’.

How does the mind do it? We accomplish this by unconsciously cooking facts and consciously consuming them.

Now, why is this psychological cooking-facts-system is important? Few reasons.

1. As mentioned, since human being is a social animal, we are bound by psychological conditions like peer pressure or cognitive dissonance which demand us to ‘think alike’ as with other people in the social group. This is what you called as – culture. We do not like to be degraded and seen as useless by our peers and society, therefore, we cook facts in attempting to convince other people and ourselves that we are not useless in any way. (Hence, we have office politics where people refuse to accept responsibility and pushing blames around – “It’s not my fault! I did my part well, but the other department screwed it up“.)
2. To protect ourselves from devastating mental breakdown just like the story above where Kisagotami refuse to believe that her child is dead. (amazingly, chimpanzee exhibit a similar behaviour too. when a baby chimp dies, the mother will keep carrying it around for the next few days, refuse to accept that the chimp is dead.)
3. A form of motivation. When experience make us feel unhappy, this psychological immune system cook facts and shift blame in order to offer us more positive views. (For instance, “Matt doesn’t love me anymore, but it’s ok. I will find a more worthy guy who will love me more.”). However this is where an optimist and pessimist are separated. As i have written here before, we can always choose the angle of our perception when judging a matter/subject/issue. Optimist will naturally be motivated by the cooked facts and choose to stay strong and finding alternatives while pessimist will stay in the death loop of cooked facts and remain in the state of avoidance.
4. Inescapable, inevitable, and irrevocable circumstances will also trigger the psychological immune system. For instance,  we will forgive our siblings for behaviour we would not tolerate in a friend. Why? Because friends come and go but siblings are part of us and there’s not much we can do to ‘unstuck’ them from us. Hence, we it comes to a situation where we have no other alternatives to take, we will cook reasons out and convince ourselves to be content with the situation. (“My brother shouldn’t cheat the girl like that! But well, since he is my brother, i have to forgive him“)

Can you think of a situation where we cook up facts or reasons to convince us of something? I could, because i’m sure we do it all the time.