Digital moralism

Every time i open a link for a news page, i am bombarded with news about the world that is either negative in its nature or is something deeply saddening. Before i know it, the animalistic guilt in me wants to click on it and read it otherwise in my own eyes i will be certified cold hearted, uncaring human with no respect or emotions for humanity and what is upon them. Therefore, my mind implores me to open the link not just to read it but to tell me to be sad over it (Even if my rational mind wants to be a little skeptical about the authenticity of the news), to forcefully react to it in my head and deem it as unacceptable and something that is deeply wrong. It’s as if a big eye is watching over me in my own head judging me for every reaction i make and how i behave. But we forget that eye is nothing but a reflection of our moral mind created by us and extremely influenced by the society around. We all are walking around with that eye above our shoulders. The one who is constantly watching us and through a feedback loop getting stronger, weaker depending on our reactions. Let me give you an example: you are scrolling through your news feed and you see picture of a puppy lying on the road after being hit by a car. Our natural reaction (or the moral reaction) SHOULD be to be sad over it! The image should elicit a feeling of disgust, along with empathy and a desire to help. However, all you can do is to look at the image and share it, get likes on it (or sad emoticons; the new invention by Facebook). But the reality might be that the page that showed it was probably getting paid by the advertising vultures which are praying on emotions of the so called traffic (groups of humans) on its page and using it to stockpile profits. Now if someone asks you who is worse: The person monetizing the picture or the person who just scrolls through without giving an emoticon to it? Who would you judge more? Of course the person who would scroll without giving an emoticon. Because that’s how our mind works, the fast system (irrational one) makes an instant judgement and marks that person as immoral. And the eye sitting on our own shoulders gives a pat on the back and says: see, he is immoral but you are not. So keep going nice human and react to the next image, post, story, etc (like a master training/petting the pet). You will get more morality points from me and you can keep increasing your chest by few cm each time you’re given a pat on the back by THE EYE. 

The truth is that people who really care about these issues are not sitting on their laptops scrolling through the daily binge news and reacting like a monkey on everything they see. Those people are out there and getting their hands dirty fighting for the causes on the ground level. Because that’s where the change happens! Sure you could tell yourself that by sharing a post you are making people more aware of it, but the reality it just like you are sitting behind a screen and sharing it and hoping that someone somewhere will take the responsibility of actually doing something about it, the people who see your post are imagining in the same. Hence welcome to the collective delusion!

So then why do we think that just by reacting it and satisfying our morality egos we will be okay to go on in our lives and every time we look in the mirror we will see an angel with wings helping the world (albeit by sharing posts). Have we become so shallow? That we ourselves decide if we are moral or not and gloat over it? 

If someone really wants to make a difference they will do it without having Facebook remind them of the causes that they SHOULD care about! Facebook cannot decide if you should care about a cause of not. Nor can anyone else. We all are born in different circumstances and depending on your environments, upbringing and other unknown factors, we care about different things.

I am not aware of any cause that was helped be solved by Facebook posts (except ministers saving stranded countrymen in a foreign land for their personal political glory, or the self-mutilating public showering challenges (for ALS). Where also we self-glorified ourselves by Proving to THE EYE and EYES of our ‘friends’ that we care!)

Some people are calling Facebook or virtual reality the new empathy machines. I would call it the virtual empathy machine. It’s just entertainment (even if it entertainment for our negative emotions). Just like the mice in cages which will die of giving themselves shocks rather than sit alone doing nothing, we all are machines programmed to avoid boredom. THIS ladies and gentlemen of the jury is the whole foundation principle of the entertainment industry. So as far as it stays entertainment it’s okay! The moment it tries to leap over and tries to be a digital messiah, it’s a problem. Because it’s trying to do what it was not supposed to, with keeping a curtain on the eyes of the people. Or by attracting their attention on something that THEY want you to see rather than what might be of more importance but something they cannot benefit from (just like in a magic show the magician uses a Beautiful distraction, who is a key part of the delusion). For this one reason, the digital world deeply vexes me, but then again until I am actively releasing rats in the server rooms of the digital shark conglomerates, I am not actually doing anything. But who knows, maybe one day....

Why so serious Jack? This post is supposed to be taken in humor and nothing else. 

Normalcy

While sitting here next to the Bodensee, It makes me wonder. I wonder about life… what to achieve, how to be great, how to do things that actually matter on a large scale? How to make a difference in the world? You might call it obsession or unhealthy addiction. But one of the things that I spend of the time thinking about is what are the ways that I can make a significant contribution in the world while my time here? What is my purpose in life and what am I on planet earth for? One can say that I might have a fixation on the idea of making a mark for myself to an extent which can easily be deemed borderline obsession. Whether that is wishing to do things that have never been done, write something that never has been written, create things that don’t yet exist or inspire and motivate the humanity to another level. In order to do that one must escape the circle of normalcy and enter the ocean of epicness. Which I believe lies on a different plane of the mind. One must go to depth of onself and find ideas, make deeper connections. The human mind works the best when given a reference point, and as Douglas Hofstader once famously said: analogy is the core of cognition; Using a reference point one can make novel connections to reach to ideas that have never had existed. Think of it this way, whenever I see things like life expectancy, ageing, food (not necessarily in the same sentence) my mind lights up about the role might food have in ageing. In order to do that one must put themselves in a surroundings where their minds are stimulated. The rest will be completed by curiosity. Oh yes curiosity is one of the most significant and crucial aspects of one’s personality. One might have desire, passion and motivation but without curiosity they are like an engine without fuel. Coming back to the point of novel connections, in situations where your mind is challenged to generate new ideas is the most fruitful way of reaching the point where you can find something truly extraordinary whether that is an idea or awakening. Challenge yourself! Escape the quotidian and be in the unusual and unexplored, seek novelty not normalcy and be in stay orbit. We all have been given a processor in our head. It is all about applying updates to our processors. Once one has found the door to such an orbit, one will automatically be in the steady presence; free from distraction of boredom. Which by fact is also one of the ways to remove boredom from one’s state of mind? As soon as you feel static, change the surroundings, talk to new group of people, some people you have never had thought of having a conversation before. Who knows what might come out of it. I get it, changing environments is tough, It is scary too! To move out of the comfort zone of the known and walk towards the realms of the unknown is like jumping out of a plane and hoping that during the fall you will build a parachute. But if we never take the jump how will we know if we can do it or not? Mavbe life is only this… Taking a fall and then building something on our way down to survive, until the thrill of it makes us get back up there to do it all over again!

But you might ask why should we do so much effort when we can just glide in life without shaking up too many things around us? But if you wanted that then you probably would not have been reading up until this point. You would have lost interest, if you reached this far it is only because your mind is curious to know, it wants to surpass the mundane and enter the extraordinary. Some people might tell themselves that we get one life, and better do everything one can before the system shuts down forever!

Why do we think we wasted our teenage years doing something that was useles?

Many times it happens that someone asks us what you did in your high school or early college and your mind suddenly goes into the consciously hidden memories deep in your hippocampus and brings out an image, the spark of which itself creates a feeling of not just emotional but physical pain and embarrassment. “Oh I did something completely useless” we yell. When the pain from this sudden burst of electrical shock starts to subside, we try and repackage the memory and hide it again until someone else entices it out again.

I am sure we all have at some point in our lives have used these same words. Should we really be carrying this burden of emotional memory with us always? Is it really our fault that we chose to do something that we now think was not worth it? Did we really waste that time doing what we did? Well the good thing is that it’s not completely true. Let’s start with the brain of young teenager vs the brain of an adult. It is certain now that some parts of a teenage brain are underdeveloped compared to that of an adult (except if you are Ra*ul G*ndhi, in that case its always underdeveloped). Specifically the prefrontal cortex- which is the execution decision making part. The part that is most involved with rational thinking and logical decision making. This part of the brain lights up when one is given a task related to rational thinking or during logic games. Anyhow, for teenagers this part is highly underdeveloped or is still being developed. Until an individual has reached 25 years of age, this part is always under constant development. It is likely that before this age, we are not really capable of rational decision making (I wonder why we are still allowed to vote under this age. Or to marry. Etc.). Hence any major life decision that you made before that age is likely to look like idiotic or stupid now in hindsight. So if you decided to study philosophy or social studies when you were 20, when you think you should have studies music or arts, don’t worry! The decision was not purely rational and you are not to blame yourself for it. It is just that you were highly incapable of making that decision at that moment of your life. Probably you took that decision because you were a rebel and believed in doing something ‘different’, or you believed in conspiracy theories about science and technology or mathematics being the source of all evil, it is also possible that you studied it because you saw a hot girl/boy in that class who you really liked and took the course just to be in their company (like the genius Richard Feynman did). Oh and maybe because you thought it is the easiest and everything else was close to sorcery. It is also possible you took it because all your ‘friends’ were doing the same. This is called collective delusion (some people even get married like that. Oh humanity!). Whatever your reason was, we all have been there and done that. We all have taken naive decisions that we now regret. But like I said before, our brains were wired differently back then. The question here to ask is that knowing everything about these differences in the psychology of young minds why is our education system build up in the way it is? Why is it so rigid? Is a teenager really capable of making such a major decision about the topic of study for whole of his/her life? Why do we put doors in front of teenagers and ask them to choose one while knowing that probably that there is no coming back from it. Do we really want kids to live with a decision they took when probably they were not even aware why they are taking it? 

So here are my two cents on the topic: chill! The time you probably think you wasted on something is the time you spent learning about yourself, what you like, what you don’t like, where you don’t see yourself, what sort of a person inspires you etc. You spent this time probably meeting new people and making lifelong friends. You could also have spent this time learning about the world and how you were wrong about certain things and change your opinion about them. No one is judging you here so stop doing that to yourself also! Would you rather be in jail? Or working for Donald Trump’s presidency campaign? (I don’t know which is worse). Of course you will feel there were so many things you could have done. But remember, the fact that you are saying this is because you are not the same anymore. You probably have changed; have become more responsible and matured. Hopefully your decisions are more rational now. So go on live your life the way you always wanted. Or at least work towards it. Now you have got no excuses or reasons (biological at least) for making the same irrational mistakes. And if someone asks you the same question in future, remember this fact and answer with confidence and not embarrassment! like a prudent man once said, whenever in doubt trust biology!

Break out

Why are all of us morbidly obsessed with making a mark? Doing anything it takes to do what we want to achieve in life. Continuously moving forward without looking around. Without having empathy for events that are happening around us. Why do we close our eyes, even if we do see why do we see and ignore? Are we all just trying to satisfy our egos? Is it really just some robot monkey sitting in our heads controlling us like we are materialistic robotic machines? Why is it that we are so immersed in daily routines (sometimes for 40 years) that we forget to do something new, to live for a cause? Why do we fear change so much? Why do our egos control us so much? Why does it keep us making feel like we are hungry wolves trying to satisfy our materialistic hunger? go out try something new, make a change, breathe again, feel alive, go do something that makes your heart race, puts you in an unfamiliar territory, challenges every bit of you to keep growing not just physically but mentally as well. It is famously said that don’t stay still. Just like still water catches fungus, still personality also starts to loose itself with time, layers upon layers of dirt forms on it. We stop learning new things, don’t try and meet new people, don’t share new ideas, and don’t give attention to things that do not fit with our bleak view of the world. Is this really called life? Living in a box? Being limited to our own crucifying thoughts. Chained in our limited capabilities... I say we break these chains, we go out and do things that we never tried, do things that brings us pure inner joy and not materialistic pleasure. Don’t be limited to your own thoughts, go hear story of others, talk to people, share ideas, share passions, share affection, inspire each other, motivate each other, be a part of someone’s dream, collaborate and work together.  Only then, can we call this beautiful journey a LIFE. Only then can we solve the problems that world currently faces without creating newer ones every day. Remember: alone we go fast but together we go far!!!

Last but not the least, take a moment, break out, open our eyes and look around. Every day is a brand new day.

Ambition

Is common to us all. Like money, it is never enough and like a mountain, it always tends to look farther away once we think we are one step closer to it. We get consumed by the notion of our ambitions/goals to such an extent that we forget the here and now completely, all in the expectation of a brighter someday. Dreams, however, can play an important part in helping us get by some of our boring todays.

It’s tricky though; the ambition and the priced success can make us neglect everything around in the eternal struggle for achieving that one goal. Affecting us like a virus, it can give rise to obsessive behavior or drive us closer to hedonism and far from empathy and compassion, so much so, that we forget what it is to be ourselves. We suppress and divert desires/motives in order to keep our focus towards that one goal. We are so deluded by our thoughts that we never stop to introspect ourselves or question our actions.

(The word itself stems from Latin word Ambitionem which literally means going around looking for glory, thirst for popularity, eager or inordinate desire for honor or preferment.)

Sure ambition drives us all. It’s like worshipping the bitch goddess, which promises sweet returns. We define success by how capable we are of achieving those goals. Neurologically, success is our ability to focus on a task with persistence. The limbic system (LS) drives this behaviour. The dominant role of the LS (the basic emotion processing headquater in the brain) is a well-known fact. It overpowers other parts of our brain (like the anterior insular cortex which processes empathy and compassion). This can leads us to behave like rabbits, running towards a carrot and not caring for anything else around. Or like a hamster on a spinning wheel. It seems the LS provides the fuel required to run this engine of ambition.

A predominant question that arises is to what extent the fruits of this narrow-vision marathon race worth? How does it matter that even after all this effort you did earn a million dollars but had no one to share your dinner with or that you were so consumed in the race for becoming a CEO that you failed to make it to you best friend’s wedding, your parent’s anniversary and other social and personal gatherings.

The point is, that it does not matter what goals you have unless you decide what path you will take to achieve them. Even if you lose one dream, it does not mean the end of life. Brain’s elasticity is enough to change or even dream a new dream. Ambitions/goals are not carved in stone! Dreams can change; so don’t get fixated by your dreams to such an extent that they become an obsession, failing you to experience the life beyond it.

Finally, remember that it is the journey that counts and not the destination. What will matter more is how many people are there with you to celebrate when you make it to the top of that mountain and not the mere fact that you did it.

Even if you fail to climb a mountain, there is a chance that you could move them! And in the end, you might not get what you want, but you will get what you need.

Stay curious and stay empathetic.

Jatin