Lesser Brain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Big Elephant

I swear I have never thought of this question before until my friend asked me about this recently – he asked – “How do you describe your own philosophical belief system?”

“I’m not sure”, I replied. “I guess I go freestyle when it comes to my thinking.” I hope he was not confused by my response.

Sure, I have read some books on philosophy and came across many different school of thoughts. But I never really bothered about them because I do not have the habit of discriminating knowledge and categorize things that I’d learned into groups and classes. You know, I do not have the habit like .. “oh this guy supports rationalism, let’s hear what he has to say.” “Oh that guy supports empiricism, since I support it, whatever he says must be right.” “Oh, that guy talks about absolutism, he must be an idiot.”

This is what I call as knowledge discrimination, something which I do not practice, and that’s why I was never bothered with the standpoints of various school of thoughts. I never like the idea of ‘supporting’ and ‘against’ like – Rationalism vs Empiricism. Which one do you think is better?

There are many philosophy school of thoughts around. Among them, as I know are – Rationalism, Empiricism, Absolutism, Relativism, Existentialism, Utilitarianism, Nominalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Skepticism and many more. So, for the sake of this post, I whipped out the dictionary and checked out the definitions of every theories above … and then to check, theoretically, on which category I belong to.

Although my style of thinking actually encompasses almost all of the school of thoughts above, I believe I’m more inclined to two school of thoughts – Rationalism and Freethought. Why Rationalism? Simply because I believe the toughest philosophical and scientific questions always need to be reverse-engineered. I believe we have to reason and deduce of how certain things work first before we could find evidence for it. Case in point -Einstein discovered General Theory of Relativity using mathematics first before conducting astronomical observations to prove his theory (on how light is bent by gravity). Apparently, empiricism is the other way round – evidence first before reasoning, which is the most common method of hypothesis in the scientific world today especially in education.

Freethought is pretty much misunderstood as it is often associated with atheism. But the true definition of Freethought is “Freethought holds that individuals should neither accept nor reject ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason.”  This school of thought is actually much broader than what it is thought to be.

Having described my belief system, I will never go around proudly proclaiming to the world that “I’m a Rationalist!” or “I’m a Freethinker!” boasting it as if I’m in a cool category. I believe people who always proudly categorize themselves in a belief system are missing a point … a very huge point. And I will tell you why.

If you want the Truth to stand clear before you, never be ‘for’ or ‘against’. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is mind’s worst disease. - Jianzhi Sengcan, the third patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China.

Before I begin, I want to share a metaphor, probably the strongest metaphor I’ve ever came across in my life so far – The Blind Men And An Elephant. The origin of this metaphor was actually from Buddha’s parables in some sutras illustrating that different people will have different point of views depending on the angle of perception that we use to observe the reality. So, the parable is about several blind men touching the elephant’s body and each of them is certain about the ‘truth’ on what they are touching. Hence, it creates a disagreement between the blind men on what they are experiencing.

But I think there’s a stronger message in Buddha’s words. He didn’t say it directly, but at least this what I think the deep, underlying message is – The ignorance of being obsessed with the small picture and ignoring the bigger picture. For instance, read the comic strip below from XKCD.

In the scientific world there’s a hint of ‘hierarchy’ or superiority between different branch of science, just like how the scientist describe above on how they feel about the ‘purity’ of science over one and another. But what these scientists are missing is the idea of ‘unity’ or the big picture of science. When you piece all different branches and fields together, that will give you the big picture of science. In other words, sociology is science. Biology is science. Physics is science. Psychology is science. If science is the big picture, why do the physicist & mathematician feel proud that they are at the top of the field? Why are they so obsessed with the small picture?

And this is exactly what I am talking about knowledge discrimination earlier.

Why do human separate and categorize things?

It is no secret that human’s mind is limited. Our mind was not tuned by Evolution to solve scientific mysteries or world problems rather, our mind is meant for survival. A hunter-gather kind of lifestyle. Hence, it is a rare gift for any person to see the big picture and could see all the links and connections underlying it because not all of us are born with the ability to be genius scientist.

To compensate this weakness of human being, we categorize and break down the big picture into smaller parts. For example Science is break down to physics, biology, psychology, astronomy, etc. and then small picture is broke down into even more smaller picture, eg. psychology is further break down to psychoanalysis, cognitive science, behaviorism, and etc.

Breaking down the big picture is perfectly fine, until when people start to become obsessed with the small picture, just as hinted in the comic strip above. And the fact is people DO get obsessed with small picture because this is how the majority of people’s mind is wired – our mind is too limited and energy-consuming to to think big. And this explains why the majority of people in the world are religious, for if they could see the big picture, they would have immediately doubt God’s existence. It is no coincidence that most modern top scientists and thinkers are atheist or agnostic for one simple reason – they could see what many ordinary people cannot see. (there’s a huge difference between the mindset of a rational-thinker atheist and militant atheist, but I will leave it to the other day)

So, back to the original topic, I believe when it comes to philosophical school of thoughts, individual categories like rationalism, empiricism, nominalism, pragmatism, idealism,etc are just basically the small picture. Calling the small picture as the ‘Truth’ is just like a blind man obsessesily clinging to a part of elephant’s body and proclaiming that he knows the ‘Truth’.

I believe when someone is curious and want to learn about the elephant, he/she got to study it without any discrimination or prejudice. Learn about the trunk … learn about the tusk .. the leg, the tail, the skin, the body. Everything. And that’s how we could effectively understand the elephant. It is a delusion to just hold the tail and proclaim that you have understood the elephant because you can feel the ‘truth’ or ‘prophecy’ in it. That’s just a subjective experience. Objectively, it tells you nothing about the elephant. If I religiously cling to Rationalism and Freethought, I would be in a delusion that I’m learning.

That’s why, whenever I hear someone enthusiastically labeling or affiliating themselves with a belief system, I always believe that they are missing the point… the big elephant.

PS: Another friend of mine asked me which philosopher influenced me the most. My answer is Buddhism. I could not imagine that my thought process is half as good as I am now if I have never read Buddhism philosophy.

Stupid and Diligent People Is the Worst Kind?

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately! – General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

Apparently, this quote came from The German Art of War. Interesting.

A little read on Hammerstein-Equord’s profile says he is an ardent opponent of Adolf Hitler. Interesting.

And I was wondering if this quote has any use in designing business organizations. Interesting.

So I spent 5 minutes reflecting on this quote on why stupid and industrious people is a menace and must be removed immediately. It was pretty counter-intuitive at first, but finally I understand his point. The reasoning is simple – think about it, if this person is already stupid, but yet he still works hard and determined to implement stupid ideas and executing stupid actions, think of all the damage that could be done compared to non-action from stupid and lazy people instead. Stupid and Hardworking people are the kind of people who would most likely drain all the resources and deviate people from efficiency.

How about from societal point of view? Think of stupid organizations who are hardcore in promoting stupid beliefs .. like extreme feminist movements, saving-the-planet-Earth movements (well according to G. Carlin that is), ideology of corrupted politicians, etc. But arguably the most damaging stupid beliefs of all – Creationists who believe God created everything on Earth by magic and miracle… and believing million years old dinosaurs co-existed with human being at one point during history. And the fact that this ignorant belief is spread to hundred of millions people in the world is beyond absurdity. That’s because behind every popular stupid beliefs, there will be a group of people who are super hardcore in promoting it.  Stupid and lazy people who make up 90% of the population would be easily swayed by stupid but convincing beliefs.

Stupid ideas attract stupid minds.

Thanks, Hammerstein-Equord for the little insight.

Thanks Elizier, for pointing the quote.

The Structure of Life

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.

Psychological Pricing on Mass Market

There are two group of consumers who will respond differently when it comes to pricing. One group of consumers who are super price sensitive and another group of consumers who are very willing to pay for premium price (think of consumers of branded shoes and five-star restaurants).

The rule of thumb in economics is, if you sell at a low price, many people will buy from you but the profit margin will be low. If you sell at high price, you get higher profit margin but less people will buy from you. It has always been a dilemma for marketers to set their pricing as there are plenty of factors to take into consideration to decide whether to target profit quantitatively or qualitatively. But think about it, why the marketers have to choose? Why not let the consumers to choose instead?

Therefore, the ideal strategy is always to leverage the situation by creating a pricing strategy where you can get customers from both sides of the extreme – The thrifty ones and the extravagant ones.

The leader of genius must have the ability to make different enemies appear as if they belonged to one category. – Adolf Hitler.

Consider a menu in a restaurant with this pricing:

Chicken Burger (plain burger) – $2

Special Chicken Burger (plain burger + egg) – $3

Roasted Schnitzel Chicken with Cinnamon Bread ( roasted chicken + cinnamon bread + vegetables ) – $7

Imagine yourself looking at the menu – Roasted Schnitzel Chicken with Cinnamon Bread surely sounds more ‘premium’ compared to Chicken Burger, no? There are many people out there who will be more than willing to pay extra $5 dollars to eat something deemed more luxurious than just a plain burger. But think about it, it doesn’t really cost that much to roast a piece of chicken, giving cinnamon bread and putting in some vegetables. I doubt the cost would exceed more than $1 by giving all these extras. Yet, if we to charge $5 extra, people are still willing to pay.

Hence, it gives an illusion to the consumers as if they have a choice – to eat thriftily or to eat extravagantly. It gives an impression to people that either they can be a cheap skate and eat thriftily or be generous and eat premium food. And the thing with human mind is, typically, we will always want to avoid getting the impression that we’re cheap if we could afford not to be cheap.

Long story short, the majority of thrifty people will always choose a plain chicken burger because most probably they just want something which fills up their stomach while people who are willing to pay will always associate themselves with luxurious food. Through this strategy, organization will be able to target customers from both side of the world.

The example I gave above is quite distinctive. In the real world, the pricing is much more subtle than this. Consider Starbuck’s menu (I got this from the Undercover Economist book)

Cappuccino – $1.85

Hot Chocolate – $1.89

Caffe Mocha -$2.05

White Chocolate Mocha – $2.49

Venti White Chocolate Mocha – $3.09

The cost of making all the drinks above is almost the same. Perhaps the more expensive one will have slightly bigger portion with a little extra chocolate powder and some added whipped cream. But what Starbucks could achieve is to target customers from the entire spectrum.

I will share a personal story to illustrate another example:

I was considering to get myself a 1TB external hard disk a while ago and Western Digital’s MyBook look to be a fine choice. So I came across 2 models – WD MyBook Essential which is RM450 and WD MyBook Studio which is RM600+. From the first impression, I was thinking of getting WD MyBook Studio as i thought it must have some pretty uber cool features which make the hundred bucks difference. But surprise surprise … the extra features was merely :

1. Several bundled software like automatic back-up software (which can easily be downloaded off the net for free)

2. Fire-wire (which is not really necessary for myself)

3. A little bar on the cover of the hard disk which indicate the space capacity left. (which is pretty cool but also not necessary)

4. Supports MAC (which I don’t have)

It’s quite astonishing that all these minor add-on and extras actually cost 150+ bucks difference. I almost fell into the trap of psychological pricing. With that in mind, I became a cheap skate and chose the cheapest model.

PS: I glanced on my draft list and realized I still haven’t complete my post Knowledge Worker’s Motivation Hierarchy yet. Oops.

Penang Jazz Festival and A Journey to Complication

Penang Jazz Festival

I went to Penang (320 kilometers away from Kuala Lumpur) during the weekend for a Jazz Festival. Overall, it was a good Jazz Festival. I’ve told myself that if this festival is 70% as good as Kenny G’s concert I attended last April, then I will be satisfied. Well, I would say it pretty much hit the mark. Kenny G’s performance is still the best live Jazz performance I’ve watched to date, so it’s normal I would want to benchmark against it every time I go to a Jazz concert/festival.

Out of 12 performers, I was really impressed with 3 groups – Jaume Vilaseca Quartet (Spain), Jeon Young Se Trio (Korea) and Ray Harris with Fusion Experience (UK).

I bought Jeon Young Se Trio’s CD and managed to get their autograph! Woo Waa! But the best performance over the 2 days was from Ray Harris. It blew me off .. totally. However, their music weren’t consistently great. Only 2 out of 5 was brilliant. Jeon Young Se Trio on the other hand, is consistently great throughout.

I will certainly want to attend the festival again if they are going to hold it next year.

A Journey to Complication

When it comes to food, my friends dislike going to popular tourist areas to eat (eg. Gurney Drive) because those hawkers often overcharge the prices. (But hey! We ARE tourists too! =P ) Hence, we often search for authentic local food places to eat every time. Well, being a guy who has no opinion when it comes to food, I let my friends to decide all the time.

On the second day, we’d decided to visit a really famous place in Penang for lunch, well known as the best ‘Asam Laksa’ in the country. However, we weren’t sure of the directions to the place, so we just relied on the signboards to guide us. We went around on and on, stuck in the traffic jam, took the wrong turn, then stuck in more traffic jam again. After 2 hours of searching, I mildly suggested – “Should we give up the plan and eat somewhere else since we are in the town anyway?”

But my friends insisted to go on. Naturally, I asked myself why? To me, that’s a really strange decision to spend more time searching for the place considering we have wasted 2 hours. (I wasn’t angry nor agitated, just curious.)

Right away, it reminded me the behaviour of a typical gambler in the casino. We can safely assume that every gambler goes in to the casino with an unshakable belief that he will win, or else why would he wanna go there in the first place? So, imagine the gambler has $10,000 in his hands. He plays roulette and keep betting on the number 18 every round. After losing 10 rounds or so, he is left with $5,000. Some rare gambler may think – “I think I have no luck today, so I better get off now before I lose everything!”  But for hardcore gamblers, they usually think the other way round – “I believe I will eventually win, all I have to do is to keep trying”. Well, unless the gambler is lucky on that day or else, usually this is the typical mindset of gamblers who will lose all their money to the casino.

I realized that when individuals invested a huge amount of resources (money, time, effort, etc) into something deemed important, they will naturally see it as an ‘investment’. For many people, to give up half way the journey is a taboo because it is equivalent of pointlessly throwing all the investment into the sea – There will be a sense of unsatisfactory or a mini-grudge inside us, an unwillingness to give up all the things we have put in to accomplish the journey. I feel this refuse-to-give-up-investment can be applied to a wide range of area especially to our belief system (superstitious belief, ideologies, mindset, etc.), hence, explaining why many people always resist to changes and also resist to contradicting beliefs.

“We have already spent 2 hours looking for the place, why not keep looking for it, so that the 2 hours spent is justified at the end?”. I can feel that’s the voices in my friends’ head.

After another hour, we finally found the place. But the place was packed like hell. We have to wait another 30 minutes before we got a place to sit. And another 15 minutes before the food arrived, 15 minutes of eating and another 30 minutes to get out of the area once we were done. Total damage – 4 hours and 30 minutes spent for several bowl of noodles … and several cups of sugar cane drink.

I was thinking, looking from economics point of view, was the decision efficient? Did the resources spent (cost) justified the benefit we got at the end? I guess for most people, psychologically, it’s hugely rewarding to spend large amount of resources to attain huge satisfaction, just like a guy who will get a huge satisfaction after spending huge amount of resources to chase a girl. But again, was the decision to keep going on after 2 hours really efficiently justifiable? I don’t know, I’m not a person who live to eat, so it’s not fair for me to judge the value of good food.

Again, I wasn’t agitated with the whole scenario. I just find it curiously interesting on how our mind works…

All in all, it was a really fun experience, we had some really really funny moments in the hotel where we laughed till our tummy hurts. I always enjoy all these humorous experience.

Trivia Conversation

A friend of mine shared a very interesting story with me. There was a species of baboon (or was it monkey? I forgot) which already thought be extinct since the early 90s due to overhunting by human being. But recently, it was actually discovered that there are many of them left in one forest. So how did these baboons evaded human radar and stayed in stealth from human eyes all these years?

First they recognized that human was a super threat, so unlike other primates which will make loud noises to alert their tribe of danger, these baboons will remain silent instead. They ‘know’ making loud noise is futile to escape from human (as we use guns). Secondly, they are using a very primitive form of sign language to communicate with their tribe whenever they encounter a human to plan an escape.

Natural selection and Evolution has forced these primates’ psychology to up one notch. I’ve long envisioned that there will come a day when human being may enslave chimpanzees and primates to do labour work for us once these primates intelligence reach certain level.

Knowledge Worker’s Motivation Hierarchy (partially complete)

 The Theory

Let’s get the fact straight – most people dislike working. Unless driven by high passion and ambition, most of us will never want to waste our energy working for someone else. But, working is also the only means of making a living and to survive, hence people do not have a choice. It’s a form of societal pressure, where each of us are expected to work hard for money, contribute to the society and work harder again … a vicious cycle.

Since working is inevitable for most people, the only thing left to choose from is the mindset of perceiving the role of work in our life – people either treat work as an Obligation (to earn money) or to be Passionate about it and take it as a lifelong Learning Experience.

Based on the analysis above, I’ve designed a framework of how worker’s motivation will scale according to the level of self-driven and passion in each of us.

Obligation/Learning Experience.

As mentioned, there are two kind of workers in the industry.

1. Work for the sake of obligation, which makes up the majority and ..

2. A learner who are motivated to succeed far.

When a worker work for the sake of working, he/she basically responding only to tasks. The worker view tasks as an obligation and his/her goal is to complete the tasks given each time. The main motivational driver for this category of people is always money … and perhaps some artificial recognition. (Yes, lavish more praises to boost their morale!)

Everyone can learn and gain knowledge from experience of doing tasks but not everyone will incorporate what they have learned into their thinking.  And this is basically what separates typical worker and highly-driven worker.

Case in point:

Some people see the glass as half-empty while some people see it as half-full. Similarly, when you give interesting insights to a worker, the worker will either choose to put a full stop to the insight or to carry the insight further.  

For instance, if you tell the worker “Marketing is actually very psychological!”. A typical worker will go “Oh, OK, that’s interesting’”. Full stop. That’s it. Perhaps the next time he has a conversation with someone else, he will just parrot out the statement and repeat it again to another person. And that doesn’t show any deep understanding at all. This category of worker will always remain at the bottom or middle of the pyramid.

However, a learner will always take the new things he just learned few steps further. “Wow, I never thought psychology has such important role in Marketing. What if I apply Freud’s Ego Theory inside marketing? What if I apply Jung’s Personality Types searching for talented people? What if … What about …”.

To activate this inquisitive mode of a Learner-worker, organization need to put him in the right place and the right position. Inquisitive needs Passion and Passion needs Interest. If the organization places a worker who love Marketing in the Information Technology department, his potential will never be realized.

Learner-workers are the ones who have the most talent and potential to do well in the organization in the future and could also bring the organization to the next level. A raw talent. And that brings us to the next level, Discernment.

Discernment

The duration of the worker’s learning curve is heavily depending on individual talent and ability. The really talented people may take only a month while a good worker may take up to a year to learn. Once a worker reaches the optimum level of Learning, naturally the worker will want to ascend beyond his current level. We could easily see this in science where there are two distinctive disciplines – The Discovery and The Art of Mastery. Human nature have the inherent tendency to control things around once we’ve done discovering it. For instance, the discovery of Electromagnetism forces, which eventually manipulated by human being to create electricity.

As we often hear in Julius Caesar’s famous mantra – Veni Vedi Vinci, this discover-and-control mechanism is firmly implanted in our mind. Thus, Discernment is the worker’s initial stage towards Control/Mastery.

In the Discernment stage, workers will shift their priority and emphasize more on Thinking rather than Learning. The worker’s framework of thinking is well developed and could see the bigger picture, better than most typical workers in the organization. Worker could manipulate their knowledge skillfully in order to create solutions and spot opportunities.

Workers at this stage are basically people who would bring innovation to the organization. These are the workers who have the vision and passion to drive the organization forward. Again, depending on individual, some are more driven to improve organization processes and achieving goals and some are still driven by the fat paycheck.

Command

The highest level of order in every organization are the leaders who Command – The people who make the crucial decisions based on their great understanding of business.

Leaders who do not have strong foundation of Learning and Discernment, will never be good enough to take the organization to a high level.

 

Learning and The Diminishing Factor

The truth is nobody can ever finish learning everything around them. Even if you get to learn everything about the business world, chances are you will most probably forget 90% about it. That’s the weakness of human. Hence, it’s not about ‘How Much You Know’,  rather, it’s about ‘How Effective You Can Think”. It’s not the Knowledge that matter most, but rather your mindset – The framework in your head which analyze the knowledge.

So, how do worker know when they have already learned enough and should move on to discernment stage? There’s no surefire method to teach people about this. We have to feel the optimum level inside our head – the point of curve which begin to even out. I will give you an analogy:

Imagine adding a road or two in the busy New York city – what differences will it make to the metropolitan area? Perhaps easing up some traffic and that’s it. But if we are to build two roads for a rural village and connect them to urban areas, then it will create a whole new commerce opportunities for both sides and revolutionize the village along the way. 2 roads in two different scenarios but such contrast of outcomes.

Same goes for learning and mastering certain skills, the element of diminishing factor will always play a role in our life. In another words, we need to know where the line is drawn between Resources Spent (time, money) VS. Benefits from Learning.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it is useless that we keep learning even after we passed the optimum level, just that in the long run, the Resources Spent vs  Benefit of Learning is not justifiable as we spend huge amount of resources just to create a tiny improvisation. Hence, organization need to allocate an amount of time and know when worker have reached the optimum level and move to the next step to maximize resources utility.

Due to time constraint, I will continue writing this essay in a few days time … Any updated content will be written in blue font.

Irrelevant Rhetoric Thoughts

While I was writing this essay, a thought crossed my mind – if everyone in this world aspire to become  entrepreneur, then who will be the janitor and washes the toilets?

I say, maybe we can invent robots to wash the toilet. But who will do the dirty work and assemble these robots? Do we then invent robots to create robots? Somebody has to do the dirty work in the first place. In other words, there are always roles within the society.

It looks to me some people are destined to be toilet cleaners.

Subtle Marketing

Few weeks ago in a business meeting, a lady told me that Tobacco companies (British-American Tobacco and Philip Morris) were actually the main contributors to the multi-million dollars anti-smoking campaigns in Malaysia, few years ago.

I was puzzled as to why tobacco companies will want to contradict their business model. She assumed it was part of the corporate social responsibility plan.

But I wasn’t convinced, I think there’s more on to that.

After reading an article just now, I finally realized the ultimate reason why tobacco industry are willing to splash huge money on anti-smoking campaigns – it’s all part of subtle marketing.

Tobacco causes addiction, and people always have hard time resisting cravings. Therefore, when a tobacco-addict come across an anti-smoking advertisement, the image of cigarette will simply activate the brain’s nucleus accumbens, an area associated with cravings. Tobacco addiction actually outweighs the fear of  damaged lungs graphics when computed by our emotional calculator while viewing the ad.

In a simple emotion-rule – Addiction > Fear

Crazy bunch of marketers.

Majority Rules

Back in my college days, there was a guy called Jimmy in my class who seemed to be trapped in his own little world. I often heard frustrations from my classmates that he has major problems in communication with his team members during group meetings and he was practically isolated and has no friends in the class. All along, I suspected he has autism and it explained well his inclination to be really introverted – an introvert of the introverts. And he knows nothing about being politically correct and offended many people all time with his straight-forwardness in his comments.

One day during lunch, one of my friends initiated the conversation on Jimmy and promptly said , “I don’t understand how can he sits in the class alone all the day long without talking to anyone. He is so strange!”

As a person who is mildly introverted myself, I didn’t felt right with the comments on Jimmy although it is pretty obvious that he isolates the world all the time.

Certainly, it looked like my friend had made a valid statement by calling Jimmy strange especially when all her friends agreed, thus reinforcing her point of view. To her and most of the people in my class, it is a rock-solid-hard-fact that Jimmy is Strange with a capital S. It is sort of like an universal rule that if you isolate yourself from the world or do not talk to the people around you, then you are strange.

However, the little truth of realization arrived when I too came across another‘strange’ behaviour among common people which I find mysterious and that was the beginning of my understanding towards the Law of Perception. And this strangeness was – Boredom.

I have many friends who vented all the time that staying at home is boring and going out for activities would be more fun. But I always wonder, what can be more blissful than staying at home and doing nothing? That to me, is the ultimate ‘Nirvana’. I find it strange that people likes to go out finding entertainment by socializing and doing activities together. People seemed to easily get agitated by the emotion of boredom and isolation. For instance, I have no problem celebrating my birthday alone, but to most people, it’s like a major taboo. And that to me is … strange.

But who is right and who is wrong? The girls who called Jimmy strange or myself who called most people strange? Both insights are directly contradicting, so what makes her more right than me, and what make myself more right than her? I realized when it comes to cultural values, it is not what both of us think that matters –  it is how the collective individuals think that matter, the bigger the better. Basically, it‘s what the majority say, not you and me.

When a big group of individuals has decided that this is the way how things should be done, then it will be a societal standard. It is a human nature that we human being group ourselves by affinities and certain shared value. Just look at the organizations and associations around us, we have religions, feminist movements, animal rights, labour union and millions of other small one.

Being sociable and extrovert is not a Truth, nor an Universal Rule – It is only something which the majority of people are used to and comfortable with. This is an artificially-construct cultural-value by the society, just like race, nationalism and religion. If we were to go deeper into this, we will come back to the square-one fundamental question – What Is Morality?

Hence, my point here is, instead of treating what we Subjectively think as the Truth and decide what is strange and what is not, we should open up our mind and embrace the diversity of personality. A kind of acceptance on Objective Truth.

The world we are living at today is consist of 80% extroverts and 20% introverts. But think about it, what if the world has a reversed personality where 20% are extroverts and 80% are introverts instead? Then socializing will be something  really really strange and weird to people because society would have set a culture that living in isolation is the way to go, just like leopard and turtle always do. But human and the world is the way it is as already determined by Evolution.

Number One Human Killer?

Squirrel naturally have anti-cancer mechanism within its body. Human being on the other hand, is pretty much naked in such defense. I could imagine if a supernova, the explosion of a gigantic star takes place, thus spreading mild level of cosmic radiation to Earth, every human being will die of cancer as our cells will undergo massive mutation. On the other hand, squirrels, fruit flies and cockroaches will just wonder why are we dying out one by one. Well, unless there are some special human being who have this anti-cancer system in their body or else we can say bye bye to humanity.

OK, i will stop digressing.

Exactly a century ago, the case of cancer is literally one in a million. Today, the statistic is staggering especially in US and UK. One in Three people (yes, as in 1/3) will develops cancer in some stage of their life.I could see a correlation between cancer and the rise of economic wealth distribution. But does it imply causation? I will try to reason this out. 

Before the industrialization age, apart from the rich ones, most people eat to live (instead of live to eat) as they 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, today 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. – Ronn.

(I’ve written this before in one of my old post)

Just over few centuries ago, families had their own farms to feed themselves. They reared their own livestock and planted vegetables to eat. If they do not have a farm, they would go to a small local market to buy fresh fruits and meat. Eating meat was actually something of a privilege back then as meat was very expensive. Most family would jump in joy if they got to have a chicken for dinner. But with the rise of age of industrialization, an economic-modernization revolution took place, giving people the opportunity to have ‘jobs’ albeit mostly labour work. When people have jobs, they will have income. As time advanced, we reached the knowledge-economy where labour-based jobs has transformed to knowledge-based jobs. In other words, it is the corporate workforce that we have today. And people’s standard of living is getting higher and higher as time advances.

These economic advancements has caused two massive revolutions in humanity:

1. People are now occupied with work, hence no time for planting, rearing, or hunting for food.

2. Distribution of wealth to common people. With money, we revert back to our basic instinct of seeking luxurious food as eating is something our mind keeps motivating us to do.

3. Thus combine these 2 factors together, the demand for meat, a form of luxurious food perceived by our subconscious mind, shoots up.

Dangerous Meat

With the surge of demand in food, instead of staying in local farms, food producers have expanded their productions network due to economy of scale – the bigger the production is, the lesser the cost, thus higher profit. This is when the real definition of Money Is Evil comes in…. a combination of two factors – the greed of capitalism and the ever demand for affordable meat  from consumers.

One of the most popular form of meat consumed by people is beef. As we know, cows and bulls’ natural diet is grass. But little we are aware of what’s going on in the food industry right now which may be destructing humanity’s health.

The cost of growing grass is pretty hefty as it takes longer time and more effort to plant it. Greedy producers then found an alternative for grass to feed the cows – corn. Using corn as lifelong cow feeds is equivalent to us feeding a baby with rice and porridge and expect the baby to grow up healthily till adulthood. No, the natural diet for cow is grass, just like a human needs a balanced diet of vegetable and meat to grow up healthily.

So, how do food producers keep the cows “fat and fit”? Heck, how could they even keep a calf alive for more than a month? The answer is hormone growth injections. This hormone functions by genetically engineer the cow’s body to fatten and prolonging its life till it becomes an adult and slaughter it right away once it reaches maturity. From the discovery of one greedy food producer, it has now become the industry’s standard.

Now, if we eat something which have been genetically modified, will the food, in turn, modify back our cells, hence causing cancer? Or will the chemicals injected to livestock mutate our cells in the long run? I really do not know. Just some interesting thoughts.

The dilemma is this – if indeed growth hormone is dangerous and slowly killing us with cancer, then why do government do not impose any restrictions or regulations on these chemicals just like how they do on tobacco and alcohol?  On the other hand, if growth hormone is not dangerous, then why the fuss from green movements and pro organic food supporters? If this is so, they will seem like a group of deluded people. Or perhaps the government is closing one eye on this issue as there’s nothing much that can be done since food is the basic essential demand?

You judge.

And by the way, just if you have ever wondered how did Mad Cow Diseases happened, it is because food producers grinded meat and corn together and make it as cow’s feeds (as it will fatten up the cow). Cow, as a herbivore animal, do not take meat and once this ‘no-meat’ stance is violated, it will basically become crazy as the mind and body’s system will go malfunction. Just search in YouTube of cows eating live chickens to watch the horror.

Futile Vegetable/Fruit

Vegetable and fruits do have natural anti-oxidant which can clear away toxins in our body. However, we are back again to square one problem – over-commercialized food. Capitalism has posed two problems in commercialized plants and vegetables here.

1. Vegetables and fruits are planted in the same soil over and over again, hence drying up soil’s nutrients in the long run. The soil is supposed to be left barren for some period of time to recuperate the nutrient on the ground before planting again.

2. Vegetables and fruits are sprayed with pesticide to control pest problems in the farm.The root of the plant/tree will absorb the chemical and so as the skin of the fruit.

As we know the root of a tree/plant absorbs nutrient and minerals from the ground to bring nutrition to fruit or vegetable. Now, we have a problem where fruits/vegetables couldn’t absorb much natural nutrient as the soil has most probably dried up. Making things worse, the plant have to absorb the chemicals along since the root does not have any ‘intelligence’ to filter up what to absorb and what not to. Besides that, eating the skin of commercialized fruits is like a double edged sword – it is the most nutritious, yet the most dangerous at the same time as it indiscriminately absorb all kind of vitamin, protein and chemicals it could get.  

Are we dead?

There must be a reason why cancer has became such a huge issue right now, from 1 out of 1,000,000 one hundred years ago to 1 out of 3 today.

Is it because of the food or because of what is put into our stomach?

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

Meditation And The Angel & Devil In Your Mind

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*

Thank you, Alter Ego.

One evening, I was with my friends to have a drink with them in an open-air eating place. Then, I saw a rainbow and spontaneously, I was drew to it. Noticing my deep observation, one of my friends joined in my observation and promptly said ..

“Isn’t that beautiful? God’s creation is really marvelous…”

By an instant, my immediate reaction was –> (o_O)”!! > ALERT! Hot button engaged!!

I quickly turned on my idle mind and activated my logical reasoning mode and went – If the rainbow, a natural process where sunlight deflects off water droplets thereby creating a spectrum of light, is God’s creation, then by logical consistency, even our feces, a waste matter from our digestive system, should also be God’s creation.

But why is there no Christians or Muslims after defecating, look on their toilet bowl and proclaim emphatically:

‘Praise The Shit’ or ‘Shit is the Greatest’ or ‘Shit is Beautiful, God is a Genius’?

If you think that I was mocking or degrading religion, I can tell you I’m not. I was only talking about some logical consistency. Crediting God with only beautiful things but ignoring the ugly things is not rational thinking. It’s called as Selection Bias. If God indeed created shit, as His obedient followers, we should appreciate how nice shit smells as a sign of acknowledgement to God’s creation. Hence, ‘Praise The Shit’.

Just when I was about to open my mouth to reason out with my dear friend, suddenly something interrupted me – It was my alter ego…

Alter Ego : That’s rude, Ronn. I hereby refuse you to voice out your thoughts.

Ronn : Ah!! Damn you alter ego! How is this rude?

Alter Ego : Because you will sound very offensive, especially to devoted religious people. You will hurt their feelings and they might think you are not respecting them.

Ronn : Hey, I’m merely reasoning out and NOT spreading false beliefs, OK! Can’t you see how he is practicing Selection Bias in crediting God? Truth hurts, no? Being Truthful is not the same as being Rude!

Alter Ego : But it will hurt you more if your friends, including the neutral ones, do not understand your points and then perceive you as rude. Remember, everyone thinks that they are right and everyone also has ‘Ego’ too. There’s a reason why people avoid discussing anything about religion and politics while socializing, because it has the most chances to hurt the self-image.

Ronn : Is my image more important than Truth?

Alter Ego : Then tell me, are you going to commit your whole life championing this cause?

Ronn : No.

Alter Ego : Then either you go on a mission and do something to change the world or else you better shut up. Nobody will take you seriously unless you are being serious. So, in the mean time, act like you’re a well-mannered boy for now.

Ronn : Sheesh, what a superficial world. Again, Being Truthful ≠ Rude!! No wonder the world is getting dumber and dumber because everyone is hiding behind their alter ego all the time.

Alter Ego : You should had expected this since people think with their cached thoughts.

Ronn : You have a good point. So, can I blog about this thought, then?

Alter Ego : I think that’s fine because nobody reads your blog.

Ronn : Truth hurts. *sob*

And so, my alter ego just smiled to my friend and then we continue with our light conversation.

Few months later, which is now, I’m glad that my alter ego has vetoed to stop me from speaking my mind out, thus saving me from unnecessary embarrassment. Along the way, I achieved several realization ..

1. Seeking gratification by reasoning or debating with other people is part of my cached thought. Being agitated by my hot button is also part of my cached thought. Acting as if I’m an Intellectual giant is also a product of my cached thought. It’s only meant to boost my ego – And it’s an illusion. Like a storm cloud, it may look to be powerful and fierce, but if you go near enough to grab it, it is just all mist. It’s an illusion.

2. Before critiquing other people of thinking with cached thought, I must first break free from it or else I’m just being hypocritical.

3. Atheism is meant to be kept to myself, not to be preached. I almost forgot that my ultimate personal goal is to study the way how Life and the World work, not sticking to a belief system (of atheism). To me the Truth is clear – there is no God. So why should I need to seek immediate personal gratification of spreading atheism to a mere few people around me? And I know the most effective way for people to discover the Truth is not through my preaches and persuasion. It is only through self-effort that people can understand it.

4. It’s always in human’s blood to correct injustice, banishing evilness and enlightening the ignorant. The idea of goodness has always been an eternal idealism for human being. However, at the same time, injustice, evilness and ignorance have always been and will always Exist. So, how do you create harmony between idealism and the reality? It is to strike the balance between the two – The Middle Way.

If you want the Truth to stand clear before you, never be ‘for’ or ‘against’. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is mind’s worst disease. - Jianzhi Sengcan, the third patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China.

Therefore, this will be my last piece of writing on Atheism.

And Thank you, Alter Ego.

Zen Buddhism

I like reading Chinese/Japanese Zen Buddhism short stories or Koans because they are simple yet deeply profound and very meaningful. They are so challenging to read because sometimes when read literally, they bear no meaning at all. Therefore, the only way to understand the moral of the story is to grasp the essence behind it. These stories typically often bring mini-enlightenment to me and brings a little Buddhism wisdom too.

Very nice.

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

The professor kept interrupted and argued with Nan-in on several ideas about Zen when Nan-in was speaking.

Nan-in then stopped speaking and served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "The cup is full. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

More Is Not Enough

There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life. One day he walked pass a wealthy merchant’s house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"

Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"

Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"

Then he became the storm cloud, flooding the fields and villages, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it – a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a rock!"

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.

He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.

Going with the Flow

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive.

"I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."

Not Dead Yet

The Emperor asked Master Gudo,

"What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?"

"How should I know?" replied Gudo.

"Because you are a master," answered the Emperor.

"Yes sir," said Gudo, "but not a dead one."

Obsessed

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out.

"Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"

"Brother," the second monk replied,
"I already set her down on the other side, but you are still carrying her."

Trading Dialogue for Lodging

In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brother monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye.

A wandering monk came and asked for lodging, properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teachings. The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the younger one to take his place. "Go and request the dialogue in silence," he cautioned.

So the young monk and the stranger went to the shrine and sat down.

Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: "Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me."

"Relate the dialogue to me," said the elder one.

"Well," explained the traveler, "first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here." With this, the traveler left.

"Where is that fellow?" asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother.

"I understand you won the debate."

"Won nothing. I’m going to beat him up."

"Tell me the subject of the debate," asked the elder one.

"Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, but he ran out and that ended it!"

Obedience

The master Bankei’s talks were attended not only by Zen students but by persons of all ranks and sects. He never quoted sutras nor indulged in scholastic dissertations. Instead, his words were spoken directly from his heart to the hearts of his listeners.

His large audiences angered a priest of the Nichiren sect because the adherents had left to hear about Zen. The self-centered Nichiren priest came to the temple, determined to debate with Bankei.

"Hey, Zen teacher!" he called out. "Wait a minute. Whoever respects you will obey what you say, but a man like myself does not respect you. Can you make me obey you?"

"Come up beside me and I will show you," said Bankei.

Proudly the priest pushed his way through the crowd to the teacher.

Bankei smiled. "Come over to my left side."

The priest obeyed.

"No," said Bankei, "we may talk better if you are on the right side. Step over here."

The priest proudly stepped over to the right

"You see," observed Bankei, "you are obeying me and I think you are a very gentle person. Now sit down and listen."

A Parable

Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

No Attachment to Dust

Zengetsu, a Chinese master of the T’ang dynasty, wrote the following advice for his pupils:

Living in the world yet not forming attachments to the dust of the world is the way of a true Zen student.

When witnessing the good action of another encourage yourself to follow his example. Hearing of the mistaken action of another, advise yourself not to emulate it.

To a sincere student, every day is a fortunate day. Time passes but he never lags behind. Neither glory nor shame can move him.

Censure yourself, never another. Do not discuss right and wrong.

Some things, though right, were considered wrong for generations. Since the value of righteousness may be recognized after centuries, there is no need to crave an immediate appreciation.

Live with cause and leave results to the great law of the universe. Pass each day in peaceful contemplation.

Nothing Exists

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made Yamaoka quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

The Stone Mind

Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves.

While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: "There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?"

One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind."

"Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen, "if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."

Learning To Be Silent

The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of silence.

On the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: "Fix those lamps."

The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. "We are not supposed to say a word," he remarked.

"You two are stupid. Why did you talk?" asked the third.

"I am the only one who has not talked," concluded the fourth pupil.

Your Own Little Destiny Part 2 : The Origin of Destiny

"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.

Psychological Glitch

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.)