Do your parents know best for you? No, you know best for you, and if you don't, you better start making it so.
"Casual sex is all about physicality, not about psychology". Wrong. Casual sex is possible by projecting a personality onto a stranger. When you get to know someone better it's less easy to project a personality on them. You must actually like them for who they are. Casual sex is very much about psychology, only it involves projection rather than actual knowledge of the partner.
Does god exit? No. "God" is an invention of man, held as a belief out of conformity, psychological weakness or lack of critical, logical thinking on the subject.
"Bad guys get away with it". Wrong. Bad guys may not feel guilt, but the way they experience life is influenced by their principles making them less happy or even full of negative feelings toward themselves, the world and other people. Their punishment is a spiritual one - and not in the afterlife. (there is no afterlife).
"Being practical means that I go after the career that offers the most money with the most stability". Wrong - being "practical" is realizing that your life is only worth something by being exiting and happy, therefore pursuing a career that will satisfy and engage you - level of lifestyle comes second. What good is a great apartment if you come home to it unhappy and tired?
"Ah... the ideal life is life without having to work, only sitting in a Jacuzzi and watching TV with my friends". Badly mistaken.
The happiest people are those who engage in the adventure of using their skills to create new things. They can experience pride and satisfaction in their own mind, independently of others - it makes you strong and gives your life a sense of purpose. It allows you to experience that you can do things well, which is fuel for living. True relaxation comes with a productive lifestyle, not without.
"If I lie, I benefit from it and others lose". Other people may lose from your lie, but you will not benefit either. Benefit is not measured primarily in material terms.
Notice that the man of integrity and principles has confidence in himself, while the one that lies and betrays his beliefs is scared of what everyone else would think of him. Which one do you think feels better?
"I am a better person if I give the slimiest sleezbucket the benefit of the doubt". No, that makes you a coward, or conveniently unrealistic, but not a hero.
"Guns create violence". Human beings create violence. The bad ones start it and the good ones use it to finish it. Disarming your self defense will not make an evil man any less evil or more compassionate. It simply makes it easier for him to hurt you. So no, guns do not create violence - in fact, in the right hands they are necessary to fight and end it.
"If I will suck up to a girl I have better chances of catching her romantic interest". Big mistake. No decent person, especially women, likes a groping man. women like men who pursue their own pleasure and pursue it confidently and openly. (No, you are not a sleezbucket to pursue your own pleasure. How else would you rather live, as a slave?)
"Winning always comes at the expense of someone else losing. Life is about hurt others to gain, or hurt yourself to benefit others". This is a common world view and is absolutely false.
Life is best when you are in a win-win situation with people around you: In friendships that provide mutual gain, in a great business deal both sides get what they prefer to have (you get the chicken, they get the cash).
If you are a man of honor and by being yourself you are hurting someone else, then their pain is a result of their own fault - not your creation. Therefore, you do not gain at their expense: You simply gain, and they simply suffer by their own doing.
This concludes my advices for today on common yet faulty beliefs. Hope you found it useful.
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This one is really useful article. I agree with each one of your clarifications on those beliefs. Some of them I already thought myself, while others are enlightening for me.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I might do more like this when I come across more such beliefs.
ReplyDeleterelly like the article esp the point about you need a sense of purpose to get through life. when will people start realising that?!
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ReplyDeleteI try my best to teach it to my little brothers, but it is hard to get such message across in a culture that considers momentary emotions rather than long term devotion to a purpose an ideal.
ReplyDeleteA career one devotes oneself to requires thinking. A playboy's life does not. It is thinking that kids learn to find painful and boring in today's education.
Productivity is simply not considered an ideal in school, so kids are not exposed to any of the great producers and scientists that succeeded big time, and they do not get to see how inspirational it is.
In regards to your idea about promiscuity operating on projection, is that your own theory? It seems very astute to me.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post.
~Jason
Thanks you.. Yes, it is my idea. The way I discovered it was by examining my own feelings and thought regarding past relationships (like if I thought someone was X before I knew them very well and turns out they were Y).
ReplyDelete"I try my best to teach it to my little brothers, but it is hard to get such message across in a culture that considers momentary emotions rather than long term devotion to a purpose an ideal."
ReplyDeleteI understand this quite well. I've had similar troubles with my two nieces. Well due to their ages (they are still very young) I have had to limit what I try to tell them so as not to confuse them, but I have had such issues trying to teach them some rational things.
I agree almost entirely. Except for the generalization contained in this statement: "women like
ReplyDeletemen who pursue their own pleasure and pursue it confidently and openly."
Of course, in your previous sentence you have qualified it with 'decent', but then the issue would be what proportion of women would be decent?
Please, do not think I am talking of this from a gender-difference perspective, but one thing I have observed in life is that people are different from each other. What the reasons for those differences is are, is something I have been curious about, but the fact remains that differences exist.
My way of looking at would be that a person 'A' (male or female) who does not mind choosing to love a person 'B' who wants to assert their dominance by having others suck up to them, deserves to be with such a person (who seeks servility). Whether the perception that person B (or a particular gender) actually seeks servility or not is a different issue.
"women like men who pursue their own pleasure and pursue it confidently and openly."
ReplyDeleteI hold this to be true because subconsciously people still realize that to be able to support one's life one must be selfish - seeking one's own interest, and not those of others (not primarily).
As a result, even though a lot of people hold altruism as a virtue consciously, they look up to heroes like Bruce Willis in Die hard or Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry" or the character of Tony stark in "Iron man" who have self-confidence and pursue their own values.
Look at fantasy art and video games - have you ever seen a hero walking bent over and apologizing? No, the heroes are always confident and they go after their goals.
Subconsciously people do realize that not being a sucker is important for living and most subconsciously adopts it as a value to some extent.
However, there are hippies out there who defy all logic and they see it as a virtue to be willing to be a sponge. But even such people would feel admiration for "one of their own" when they stand up to others.
Total escape from reality (except insanity or death) is not possible.
As a result, a lot of women are attracted to the "bad boys" because they are selfish (maybe not in the best way, but it sure beats those who try to suck up to a woman and say anything just to be liked). Subconsciously, they realize that to be alive and to be happy one must reject the chains of altruism. I am yet to see a woman who drools over a man of weak character who is willing to do everything to please her.
Some may think it is "sweet" but there will never be any sexual attraction in a situation like that.