Psychology of Selfishness

On setting Personal Boundaries

2011-11-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

One of Altruism's worst effects is that people feel the obligation to let others step on their personal boundaries or to act toward them in a way that is less than respectful or beneficial.
People believe that this is necessary to maintain healthy relationships and they try to smile as they agree to things that in actuality fill them with resentment.
The final result is that the accumulated frustration comes out in the form of angry eruptions, criticism of the people who take advantage of their "generosity" and so on.

In reality, you get as much respect and personal space as you take for granted you should have.

It is not enough to communicate once in a while what you want and expect, you have to believe it and be convinced of it subconsciously so that it is expressed in small things that you do, in small reactions to how people speak to you, what they ask of you and so on.
When you are truly convinced that you deserve something and you take it for granted that you deserve it, then setting your boundaries is done in a manner that is calm and assertive rather than angry, defensive or demanding.
(That is not to say that it is always the case that if one demands respect angrily that one invited to be stepped on. There are people who want to step on others regardless of how others project themselves).

The irony is that relationships in which people try to be altruistic to one another will end up falling apart because both parties would end up feeling used and disrespected even though they are inviting it with a smile.
They act in a way they consider "generous" and expect others not to take advantage of it at the same time. This shifts the responsibility for setting your personal boundaries from yourself to those around you. They have to try and guess if you would really benefit from something you are offering to do or not. For example, suppose we are talking about a married couple with a kid. The mom, say, offers to leave her work to take the kid out of school several times a week, feeling that she is being generous and expects to be appreciated for it and for her husband to understand that she does indeed sacrifice work time for this. However, surprisingly, the husband starts asking for her to take the kid out of school more and more. In his mind, he may not see it as using her at all because of how nice she acted about the whole thing. Meanwhile she accumulates resentment thinking "who does that bastard thinks he is? Does he think his work is more important than mine? Why doesn't he take our child out of school?" and so on.
Had she simply took it for granted that they should split the responsibility equally, no such emotions would result and the relationship would be much happier. Would the husband really benefit from his wife's "sacrifice"? No. He may save a couple of hours during the week, but he loses something much more precious - the happiness he has had at home.

Altruism ends up benefiting no one.

According to Ayn Rand's concept of rational selfishness, people in a relationship act as traders - they never give when it is a sacrifice and they never expect someone to sacrifice for them. "Trading" is used here in a wide sense that includes emotional payout, not in a business sense of financial deals. The selfishness principle of behavior is based on the idea that people live to be happy and that they get into a relationship to increase their happiness - that they are right in getting into a relationship for the primary purpose of being happy.
Altruism, in contrast, holds that a relationship should be based on an obligation for mutual support in times of trouble. It predicts sickness and trouble primarily rather than happiness, life and self-fulfillment.

One last thing I want to write about on this topic is the effective way to set personal boundaries. This is something I learned from watching numerous episodes of "The Dog whisperer", a famous show on national geographic about dog's psychology.
One of the main things the show teaches you is that an animal must set personal boundaries in a calm and assertive manner if it is to receive them. This becomes especially clear in observing different types of leadership (or attempted leadership) of a pack of dogs. You can't get a pack of dogs to behave by frantically yelling at them or by showing anger. You can't do it by hurting them out of frustration. It won't work if you ask them really nicely or plead them to do what you want and expect. The only way it works is by taking it for granted that they should follow you and calmly asserting the boundaries as soon as a dog crosses them. A pack leader that lets other dogs step on his boundaries will cause a break down of the pack, where everyone attack everyone, including the leader. Dog owners often think they are doing their dog a big favor by not setting limits, but in fact, as the show shows, such dogs become anxious and start assuming the role of leadership themselves and they get very confused if and when they are being punished for something.

I find that for people it works the same way. Suppose someone tells a disrespectful joke to you. How you respond in that instant determines how others will treat you in future cases. If you are convinced that you deserve respect, you are likely to react calmly and assertively in dismissing the joke or communicating that you do not approve of it. If you you believe, however, that you should be tolerant of such jokes you may A) try to accept the joke with a smile or B) erupt angrily against your own inner demand to accept it and burst in anger at the person who told it.
Small cases like these over time create an expectation others have from you on what you should tolerate or not. If you accept such jokes, but then, once a year you bother to tell people you find them offensive, don't be surprised if you will see very little change. If you yourself are not convinced you deserve that respect and that others should give it to you, neither will anyone else be convinced. In conclusion -

You get as much respect and personal space as you take for granted you should have.

Bad ideas made powerful by unidentified true ones

2011-05-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

A lie is best hidden between two truths.
Nothing can give more feeling of conviction to a wrong idea than to have it sandwiched with a couple of unidentified good ones.

One might look at a person who is blind to facts and to anything that does not confirm some belief of his and conclude that "One must have an open mind", which means, "one must listen to every Bullshit out there and never assert any full confidence in one's own opinion".
The true problem with the stubbornly blind is that they are stubbornly blind - that they do not conform to facts and truth, NOT that they are loyal to their own way and view.

There is a tendency not to distinguish between the different elements, to clamp them together, and then use one of them as the "core guideline", sandwiched in the power of the emotional conviction of the other truths surrounding it.
In this case, unwillingness to listen to others who disagree is what's being targeted - it is the lie that is hidden and reinforced by 2 truths, the truths being that it is bad to be willfully blind, it is bad to ignore people when they present relevant facts.

Consider a few other examples in which the true element explaining some bad behavior remains unidentified and some other good element is made to curry the guilt.

Take for example the following case:

A military-trained sniper decides to take the law into his own hands and execute people whom he believes deserves punishment without a trial. He also kills those who stand in his way and any law-enforcers who try to stop him.

There are many things that can be said about his behavior: He stands on his own, he has a strict moral code he is certain of, he is extreme in doing what he thinks is right, he is more focused on punishing the evil than protecting the good and more.

There are a lot of elements in his behavior that under a different context are admirable and yet in this case they all yield a bad result. If one is unable to determine what is the root of the evil in what this man is doing, one might easily warn oneself against one of those other traits that are good.
One might tell oneself something like: "See? this is what standing above other men will do to you", "See? being extreme can turn a man into a cold blooded killer. It is much better never to be certain of something when it comes to moral issues", or "This is what happens when a man stops listening to other people. One should always come to agree with others before acting on one's own".

The real problem in this sniper's behavior is that he is focused on punishing evil at the expense of hurting the good. If justice is his goal, he does not serve it. He chooses an illogical way to live in society (assuming the legal system is not corrupt - that would be a different discussion).

It is not easy to identify that element among all the rest, but if one does not take the time to do so, one might end up with a conclusion which would be devastating to one's life.
One might become afraid to make decisions on one's own, or do what one thinks is right, or stand alone in disagreement with others or even develop one's own moral code and stick by it.

If a crazy sniper that kills good guys is what happens when one is certain one is right, maybe it's better never to try to be right or do the right thing at all. The conclusion is a spiritual death sentence.

Another example of a lie hidden between "two truths" is the concept of selfishness.
We all know the type of people who seem to think "only of themselves" - they exploit others, do not respect their property or sovereignty and basically see people as tools for their pleasure or goals rather than real people with goals of their own and values.

Then, people confuse that with EVERY form of selfishness. They think THIS is what selfishness IS.
So actions like, making an honest living and wanting to keep the money for oneself, is all of a sudden bad, because one "only thinks of oneself" in doing so. Or wanting to take a vacation in Disneyland instead of giving the money to someone who needs food is "selfish".

Notice, however, that there is a big difference between exploiting someone else for one's own pleasure and simply making an honest living and enjoying it, but this concept of selfishness makes no distinction between the two.
The real problem with those who exploit others or see them as nothing more than a tool is a failure to see other human beings for what they are: human beings with goals and values of their own. It is a psychological problem and it actually makes the one who has it psychologically injured because they can never form intimate relationships and can never enjoy other people.

This element is much harder to identify, but it is the right one, and not identifying it can lead to devastating results, such as feeling guilty for wanting to enjoy one's property, life and money instead of giving it away.

Another example is a wrong conclusion about sex. One might look at a promiscuous person and conclude that sex in itself is wrong. The true element which makes the behavior wrong, is something else. There could be several reasons I can think of why someone would be promiscuous: they are afraid of bonding with someone deeply and so they project their fantasies on strangers, they have low self esteem and are trying to bring it up by getting sexual attention from others and so on.
The true element is harder to identify, but a conclusion like "sex is bad" or "it is bad to be attracted to many people" are wrong and damaging. For teenagers especially, because as a teenager, it's not as easy to identify one's values in others and so it is normal to be attracted to more people than one's adult version would.

Another example is the notion that caring about one's external appearance is "superficial" and bad. It's ground in reality is people that appear to have "no personality" and only care about their appearance, or people who preserve their appearance as a replacement of good character.
A.K.A the Beverley hills bitch who would be caught dead wearing the wrong item but would destroy someone else's hopes without a moment's hesitation.

One might look at her and conclude that somehow caring a lot for one's appearance is tied with being evil. This can lead to giving up on a great pleasure: On looking good and celebrating one's own value in social settings.

Similarly, one might look at a narcissist and conclude that self-love is bad. Or at least "excessive self love". Well, how would one measure something like that? It can't be done.
Narcissism has its root in something entirely different.

One does not have to identify the truth in all of those cases. One does not have to become a trained psychologist in order to avoid the problem of condemning self-love.
However, it is sometimes hard to leave some case one observes without drawing some conclusion from it. In fact, one might conclude from this blog post the conclusion that it is best never to draw conclusions from cases one sees.
I think the correct course of action is either to take the time to completely figure out what is the root and cause of some bad behavior you see, or just to tell yourself that you have no way to determine that and simply walk away without a conclusion.

What one ought to watch out for are those snappy conclusions one makes based on superficial observations (like looking at the pretty bitch and conclude that caring for your looks is bad).

The motivation of creating art

2011-05-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

Why should one create art to begin with?

People create art for different reasons: Some are impressed by the skill it takes to depict some object in a realistic manner and want to do it themselves, some want fame or glory or attention and try to do that which is "different" to get attention, some find it relaxing to sit down and create a painting of something aesthetically pleasing that they see, some have a need to give form and visibility to the things in them that they cannot express in words but yet need to see and ponder of.

True art, I believe, originates almost only from the last motivation.

If one wants to describe some object realistically, all one has to do is to grab a camera. It is nonsensical to work X20 as hard to produce the exact same result a camera would. Art is needed to describe those things which can't be seen. To give an example; describing the conflict between good and evil. In real life one may watch the news, however, the news carry with them a lot of details and complexity. A battle between good and evil men does not appear in a dramatized, pure form. In an artwork, on the other hand (like a painting), the artist focuses on the faces of those involved and their body movement reflects what they do, how they feel and what kind of men they are. The surrounding details may be depicted deliberately out-of-focus, both in their location and level of detail. The result is something that no camera could ever capture, but which purifies and dramatizes the meaning of "a battle between good and evil" the way we experience it. It describes it in a much more intimate manner, which makes art very emotional.

A young artist growing up today may be intrigued about the art world and immediately struck with the impression that to be an artist one must draw bowls of fruit. I remember myself at the age of 13 thinking that (however, I found the bowl of fruit routine too boring and after a couple of attempts completely deserted it in favor of painting what I actually wanted to paint).

Art, with its emotional impact is a result of concretization of those things which mean the world to human life and yet have no easily ready physical form in reality. Questions like "what kind of creature is man", "what is the relation of man to the world", "what is the nature of love and beauty" - such questions only art can answer, because it alone has the power to present that which we abstract from numerous cases around us and present them in a pure form, in a form that allows one to focus on that object and get almost a direct grasp of the meaning is of beauty, of man's place in the world, of the nature of good and evil and so on.

So what about the bowl of fruit routine? Isn't it art, also? It is, in a sense, but it is not fully art because it usually does not serve the normal function of art I describe above.
It usually describes no abstract meaning nor does it have any emotional meaning to an observer besides being the feeling of being impressed with the artist's skill. However, one may be impressed with the skill of a vehicle mechanic, that does not make a car into art.
Still life paintings describe several things which correspond to the way the human eye works, more than to man's conceptual faculty.
Such paintings have composition which complement the path our eye takes as we observe the objects in it. It also displays things in a modified way than they are in reality - emphasizing some parts with more light, contrast or glow while diminishing the appearance of others. It creates an effect of focusing our eye on something in a way that does not normally happen in reality - adjusting the world, in a sense, to the way our vision works rather than adjusting our vision to the world.

If the role of art is to show us those things which are so abstract that we rarely get a direct, focused glimpse of them in the real world, then a good still life painting will do the same but in regard to the process of experiencing objects. It is closer to an abstraction of the physical path we take in viewing the world than to the conceptual one, but it still does something of the sort for us.

Occasionally, a painting of still life is art in the full sense, because it carries with it an abstract message with emotional power. A set of keys viewed from an intimate angle in extreme perspective, describing pair of ordinary keys as a shiny, treasured object carries with it an abstract message: It describes a state of mind in which objects are perceived deliberately, calmly and beautifully - the same way a child would see them.
As adults we usually hurry and don't take the time to observe a pair of keys, but a kid may approach it quietly, look at it up close, touch it, observe how the light shines upon it.

To create a still life painting that illustrates that abstract state of mind, is to create art in the full sense. It concretizes, it inspires (or causes pain) - but it has an emotional impact related to some fundamental abstraction (fundamental to human life, that is).
In this case, the fundamental abstraction being concretized would be "living in the moment" or "enjoying the world" or "using our mind in a way which is relaxed and joyful".

Most of the still life work, however, I find completely devoid of any such message. They are usually boring. Those which look just like the object in real life are even worse, in the sense of them being or not being art, because they contribute or alter nothing in terms of how we see the world.

Modern art, relies on the fact that people have a hard time identifying what art IS. It is much easier to identify what art is based on it being in a frame and on a canvas rather on what the abstract essence of it is.
Some of them try to describe "emptiness" by using an empty canvas. But does it? Does an empty canvas the right way to reach the concept and experience of emptiness inside us?
No. Not unless one stretches one's mind very hard to try and remember experiences of feeling emptiness and relate it to the empty canvas. However, a painting showing a desperate man struggling to go through some gray-looking, empty desert would do the job. THAT is how we internalize "emptiness".

So after this discussion of what art is, I go back to what I started with - which is the motivation to create art.

Those who just want attention to themselves will not create art - they will create noise.

Those who are primarily motivated by desiring the ultimate realistic-rendering skill will likely end up with a display of skill, which may occasionally carry some inspiring or emotional message. It will not be art. How could it be? If the process of creating something does not involve the artist's emotions how do you expect it to have an emotional impact on an observer?

Those who try to go for the emotional impact by displaying mutilated bodies and the contents of some animal's gut are a joke. Just because you create something with an emotional impact does not mean it is art. Art is a concretization of some abstract idea related to human life.

The artist that feels compelled to open a drawing pad to put down an image he has in his mind will create art (even if poorly rendered), but it will be art, or the first steps toward it.
The more he manages to describe the abstract meaning that compelled him to draw better, the better the artwork will be. It needs to be realistic to resemble what we see and know, but not camera-realistic as to be indistinguishable from what we see in every-day life.
Composition plays a role is making a work of art successful, but composition has no power to make random objects into art. This is why I believe composition plays a secondary role only in art and can never be made to be the first consideration.

The artist who feels inspired to paint or draw or sculpt some person or object who, to them carries some emotion and abstract meaning will create art also. The artist doesn't have to understand what the message is in verbal, exact terms to make art. I think that in most cases an artist feels the need to express something precisely because they don't know the identity of the thing in full and they want to see it realized to be able to ponder it.

The rest of the motivations will create something which may be art in some sense but not in another.

___________________________
A couple of final notes:

To give due credit: most of my writing here is learned from Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto. I think the analysis I present here is compatible with her ideas.
I am myself an artist - I currently study art in Georgetown Atelier, a school specializing in classically-inspired method of training.

Lisa VanDamme Responds to WSJ Article "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior"

2011-03-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

These two wonderful videos discuss the question of the proper goals in educating a child: According to the WSJ article, a child's individuality should be repressed in favor of excellence. Lissa VanDamme replies that happiness and personal fulfillment should be the focus of a child's education in a productivity-focused manner.

She holds that there is no dichotomy between a child's happiness and his success in life.

I agree. Well said.

I'll only add that, while Chinese children brought up this way will be good for imitating good violin players, they will never be the kind of good that can invent new things or have any kind of creativity. Creativity requires the self, and that is what has been destroyed in them their whole life.

The personally fulfilled IS also the genius: It is a Darwin, fascinated about animals, a Newton, fascinated about physics, an Einstein or a da Vinci.

The repressed is a parrot that has been excellently trained in copying to perfection.

Dogs' Psychology - Lessons from The Dog whisperer

2011-01-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

Dr. Doolittle was a legend a few years ago, but it is now a reality. Cesar Millan understand dog's communication in full. So much to the point that he can transform years-long habitual behavior of dogs in a matter of minutes and he can explain behaviors which appear inexplicable. He can make dogs act a certain way by using and reading body language. He understand them by observing their facial expressions, the way they breath, bark, what direction they're facing and how they hold their tail.
These are also all the things dogs use to understand one another, making him a true master of "speaking dog-ish".

Cesar's show, The Dog whisperer, airs on the National Geographic channel (link for more info).
The show is about training humans to understand what dogs really need and through that to correct the behavior of the dog and make the dog into a calm, happy follower.
[Episodes are always available on Hulu for free (link) to give you an idea of what the show is like if you have never watched it.]

The show focuses on particular problems with particular dogs, but through dealing with that, it reveals the world of dogs' psychology in depth.
In this post I would summarize what I've learned about dog's psychology from the show and then do a comparison between the similarities and differences I see between dog's psychology and human psychology.
I am sure that the summary would not be complete, as my understanding of dogs' psychology based on the show is partial. But I will summarize what I've gathered.
Cesar's knowledge of dogs is a breakthrough in the field of animal psychology and should, in my opinion, be helpful to understanding human psychology since we are an animal too, though of a different kind.

One main essential of dogs' psychology is that dogs always live in a pack, and they behave according to the norm of the pack, which is set forth by the pack leader. Dogs in the wild travel in packs and a pack always has a pack leader.
The pack leader is the dog which is most confident, high on physical energy and dominant.
"Dominant" is a state of mind every dog (and animal) can have. Some dogs are more genetically inclined to it while others are more genetically inclined to be submissive followers, but every dog is capable of these two states: submission and dominance which they will assume depending on the conditions around them. In fact a lot of animals have these states of mind, including birds, cats, humans. A bird is capable of telling a dog what to do using body language, just as a human can project serious leadership which a dog will follow, or a more passive state of mind, in which case the dog will take charge and assume the role of pack leader. Social roles of leadership or of a follower exist throughout the animal world because animals are social beings and they depend on their species for survival at least early years and in most species beyond that time as well.
The distinction between a leader and a follower is central to dog's psychology. Once a leader is chosen for a pack, the pack will protect the leader.

The pack leader is chosen by dogs by two things: his level of energy (how active he is) and his dominant state of mind (if he is ready to take charge of other dogs).
Whenever the circumstances are that a particular dog is the strongest (mentally) in his environment, he will start acting dominant (while in a stronger pack it would be a follower).

A "dominant" behavior is a behavior in which the animal assumes the role of telling others around it how to behave. It sets the example and punishes or warns those who do not follow.

Animals communicate through emotions, or state of mind and everything they read off of one another is used to understand the state of mind the other dog is at. From a distance, they use body language to figure out how a dog feels about their presence and about the environment. If a dog is fearful they might avoid it so not to get involved in a fight, or the pack may bite it to snap it out of the weak state of mind. Dogs see fear or insecurity as weakness and they punish a weak state of mind. From evolutionary point of view, this makes sense, since a pack in the wild must survive and a weak state of mind will be detrimental to its survival. An interesting point to note is that Human beings don't do this (punish or abandon a weak state of mind) - our behavior is guided by ideas (as I shall discuss later). So if our idea is that a weak state of mind is good, people will nourish it.
In the dog world, however, dogs expect one another to be strong and be responsible for their own state of mind. If a dog is too weak or if it misbehaves and slows down the pack, or is fearful, it will be bitten into behaving or abandoned if it does not overcome its weakness.
I am unsure how dogs act when a pack member is injured. I don't think they desert it, but I am unsure. Dogs get emotionally attached to their pack members, as can easily be seen in the relationship they have with their owners. A dog gets ecstatic when a human returns and sad when the human goes away. If a pack member dies, the pack grieves for about a month, after which they move on.

To go back to dog's communication: As I said, dogs communicate through reading each other's emotional state of mind. they do the same with all other animals, including humans. It is incredible how, while people are not readily capable of identifying each other's state of mind, a dog can easily detect it. A person may seem fine and merry to other people but if he's nervous a dog will pick up on it right away and may attempt to protect the human by becoming aggressive. In any case, the dog always knows how the human really feels.
I think people read one another's emotions as well and use it to decide how to behave, however, not with the same level of accuracy and not with automatic accuracy as dogs seem to have. I should note that dogs are not born with this knowledge; puppies are quite clueless and they may come close to aggressive or fearful dogs, but they learn over time because of seeing the consequence and behavior associated with the body language, sounds and scent that they gather.

A dog that challenges the leadership of an existing pack will immediate draw to himself alert and aggressive behavior from that pack. They detect the challenge from the way the dog moves, hold itself, breathes and looks. Direct eye gaze is a sign of a challenge. Dogs hat get along don't normally gaze at one another. So if a dog stands with its head and tail held high, breathes shallowly and gazes at its surroundings, he is declaring that he has come to own and lead and he will be treated according to this message that he is sending.
Dogs don't actually have a language, like people. Their barks communicate emotions, but not specific words.

A central concept in dog's psychology is ownership. It is not the same concept as in the human world. Dogs don't regard ownership as "the one who created it owns it" as humans do nowadays. In their world, the pack leader owns whatever the pack hunts and the leader decides when the rest of the pack gets to eat. The pack respects the pack leader and will allow it to dictate the time and order of feeding, though they may fight among themselves (a fight which the pack leader will break by punishing the one who started it).
From dogs' perspective, dogs own objects, space and other dogs (or animals).

To compare to humans: Humans beings communicate through highly abstract concepts (which are developed from observations). Dogs are not capable of abstracting to such a level, nor are they capable of creating things beyond hunting. The human race survives through altering its environment, creating things from it to survive, while dogs exploit the environment without creating things from it. Human beings can understand the concept of force, for example, in its scientific sense, while dogs can only get "I push, it moves" but they don't relate a rock falling and moving stuff to another dog pushing them, while the human mind is constantly for the lookout for such generalizations. This is why we have the concept of "force", which generalizes rocks, people, atoms and stars while dogs only go as far as "I push, it moves". This is why us humans have a language and why we need it. Words communicate specific concepts, while dogs stay on the basic level of emotions to understand one another and the world around them. Dogs do generalize (or abstract) on some level: they have a mental group for "the young" (puppies, babies and other animal youngs), females and males, they identify members of different races (they can make a conclusion about the whole human race, for example, and act accordingly to every new human they meet, showing that they distinguish humans as a group).
However, beyond such abstractions, their brain does not abstract further.

Dogs' psychology is simple - it is as if one took a human being on all their psychological complexity and stripped them off of their ideas; leaving simple, emotion-based reactions to observe.

I'll present several examples illustrating the underlying similarity in dog's psychology and human psychology.
Example #1: Dogs who are fearful or insecure tend to be aggressive, because they expect harm to come to them from other dogs, even when there is no sign of it. Humans exhibit the same behavior though it is harder to see it in such simple terms because they would always have reasons for thinking or acting hostile.
Another example: An insecure dog that gets affection from one member of a household will act more aggressive around that human because they derive a sense of confidence against the others when being close to that individual. This behavior also exists in humans. AKA the insecure bitch that finds sudden courage to open her mouth on another member of the "pack" when she is around her good friend, which is also a member of the group.

Example #2: Both dogs and humans have a need to be productive as tied to their self esteem and happiness. Lack of a "job" or productivity leads to depression. Many cases in the show showed dogs who were lifeless and depressed and became happy when given a job such as sheep herding, carrying laggage for the human, pulling the human or tracking scent. It makes the dogs feel proud. This is the same in the human world. There's nothing like lack of a productive purpose to bring a man down and make him feel worthless.
One show featured a dog who was cooked the best Italian food out there and the owners begged the dog to eat it. It came to the point that the dog became like a rag and wanted nothing to do with the food. It was only after a few weeks of training in a new environment that the dog relearned to come to the food and work for it that the dog regained its enthusiasm for life.

Example #3: The way to gain the trust of a fearful dog is by slowly approaching it from the side - making oneself visible yet making slow progression without direct confrontation or sudden movements. The same is true with people, though less so in the physical realm and more in the conversation realm. One does not present personal questions, but carefully tries to talk about a favorite subject to the fearful individual and so on. The execution is different but the underlying approach is the same.

Example #4: In relationships, dogs have four components: trust, respect, affection and submission/ domination. They may trust someone to be good to them and yet disrespect that individual by jumping on them or taking their stuff. They can be fearfully respectful of someone yet distrust them, and they can either be submissive (a follower) to someone or attempt to lead them and feel as if they "own" them, or be equal pack members. It is fairly easy to see these components because dogs show these emotions in direct physical form: If they distrust someone they will not get close to them, and so on. Their affection depend on the energy (or state of mind) of the other dog. Some dogs are a good match in temperament while others are not.
In the human world respect and trust are fundamentals in relationships (and submission/ domination are also present). Trust and respect in the human world are not expressed in jumping on one another, but in more subtle ways via communication and actions. Affection in the human world, however, has vastly different roots than dogs'. Dogs feel affection toward their pack members, and particularly toward dogs which match their energy and temperament. Dogs are selective too toward individuals, as are humans. However, human beings develop affection based on complex subconscious ideas. We develop a subconscious understanding of what we consider good traits and bad traits and then feel affection toward people who have those traits. Temperament does not play a central role in determining whom we would like or dislike.

Example #5: Calm assertive leader vs. frustrated punishment: Dogs follow a calm assertive leader - one that corrects behavior or punishes behavior not out of anger or frustration, but out of intent to set things moving on the right track, keeping in mind the value of the pack member being punished. When a human attempts to punish a dog with anger or frustration the dog will not accept the human as a leader. This is very similar to how human leadership works and how parental leadership works (or does not work). Kids that are punished with anger and frustration do not obey their parent nor respect them - they learn to sneak behind their back or openly defy them even if physical punishment is likely to be administered. However, parents which practice calm assertive limitations on their children gain their children's trust and respect and the kids are disciplined and not rebellious.

Example #6: Grief or sorrow are considered a weak state of mind in the dog world. A dog which is grieving will not be chosen for a leader. In the human world, people feel an almost innate need to hide negative emotions past childhood. Outbursts of cry, for example, are almost never done in public, and when they do, kids past the age of 6 would normally pick on a kid who is doing it and would see it as a weakness. I believe, however, that this inclination can be overriden by cultural ideas. If someone is brought up to think that crying in public is admirable they will do so, however, it seems to an irrational thing to do. Sorrow is recognition of loss of value. It is a vulnerable state of mind, in which normal functioning and survival is harder. A happy, calm individual who has lost nothing can easily function well, think and perform well, but a grieving individual will function slower and in less efficiency.

Example #7: Both species automatically show emotions in body language and facial expressions. Dogs learn to read it, humans may or may not (though the obvious, unsubtle expression are almost automatically learned).

Turning to the fundamental differences between humans and dogs: I see two fundamental differences: Humans beings are motivated by emotions, but their emotions are determined by their ideas. Our ideas are far more complex than dogs' because we have such an amazing ability to abstract. Our mind is built to seek similarities and differences and group them together into generalizations. Only humans can see the similarity between an open sea and an open future (one is physical, the other referring to career and social options which is a completely different field).
The extent to which our ideas determine our motivation and action is so extreme, that a person can feel content killing themselves if they are convinced it is good. The ethical idea of sacrifice is highly abstract - dogs are cognitively incapable of it and so are guided by simple conclusions and instincts. Dogs can never knowingly harm themselves because they can never reach such a high level idea of 'sacrifice'. Instead, they learn right and wrong from physical pain and pleasure.
The second difference, which is a result of the first, is that human beings create for survival, while dogs exploit their environment and travel. It is the cognitive difference, which in turn creates the difference in intelligence that allows humans to invent and create things from our environment. Because of this, people settle down in a home while dogs need to travel daily. If they don't get their power walks, they feel depressed.

The fundamental similarities are: our emotions. We have the same emotions with the same value judgment behind them, only, again, in the human world, our emotions are based off of far more complex ideas and analysis of things. Human beings experience additional emotions which dogs do not have, such as admiration, hatred (according to Cesar dogs are only aggressive but not hateful) and more. However, basically the emotions have the same universal value judgment. Sorrow means loss of a value, happiness means gaining a value, fear means danger to values. It is interesting to note that anger in humans leans on our abstract ethical principles, while dogs get aggressive if they feel threatened, but they do not abstract principles of good and evil and therefore do not feel anger as a moral emotion, but as a simple reaction to someone harming them in one way or another (such as taking their food away). Similarly, dogs feel affection but don't fall in love or admire. They respect, based on the energy someone is having, but not based on their character, as humans do. Jesus in the dog world would have been considered a whiny weak member and would be kicked out the pack. In the human world he is admired by many. This is because their admiration is based primarily on the traits of character and not on the "energy" the person has. A person can have consistently weak state of mind of constant sorrow and yet be admired. Never in the animal world.
Another fundamental similarity is that we are both social and sexual creatures. I think these are built into us in the form of innate psychological and physical needs.

The last thing I have to say in conclusion is that I hope Cesar will some day write a book documenting all his knowledge of dogs' psychology and how they live in the wild. It is a remarkable achievement and the value of his knowledge goes far beyond teaching a few dogs how to get along with their owners. It can contribute tremendously to the field of psychology.

Does Reason destroy Emotions?

2010-12-04T19:30:00.000-08:00

As a teenager I had the notion that reason has the power to destroy emotions. That thinking on a subject and analyzing it has the power to make it detached from my values.

I think this a common viewpoint and phenomenon and I wonder what causes it.

I know it is not the way things are for me today, but the very opposite. The fact that I understand things better makes me feel more clearly and intensely - because subconsciously I see the elements involved in daily occurrences more clearly - I see how they relate to my values more clearly and so I get more emotional about them.

Sometimes reason and emotions can have an opposite "opinion". Because emotions are based primarily on subconscious thinking while reason is a conscious process. So it is possible to be very mad at someone while consciously thinking that one has no reason to be mad. The conflict can be resolved with successful introspection, but it is possible to have such a split prior (or without) introspection.

However, it seems like reason as destroying or going against emotions is a bigger issue than just a few instances. People believe that reason is inherently opposed to reason - that the way to know and live fully is to base one's cognition on emotions rather than on thinking.

I think one possible reason is that most people (and me as a teenager) do not hold a rational, consistent system of ethics. What we learn as ethical or "normal behavior" from society is almost entirely a set of arbitrary rules, based on common sense in part and on blind heritage in the other.
Meanwhile, subconsciously, people do develop their own ideas of ethics which are only experienced as "feelings" of what is right and what is wrong, without the ability to understand why it is so. The result is that every time they apply reason, they feel stiffed in their decision making and in how they feel about the situation, while when they use their emotions without reason their automatized values remain safe.

It is knowledge of rational ethics with full, clear understanding of it that actually solves the problem and makes reason a tool and an aid, rather than an enemy and a destroyer.

My conclusion is that reason does not inherently destroy emotions. It is a tool, a valuable tool to understand one's emotions and ultimately, to have the power of conviction and clarity in what one feels.

Intellectualization as a defense mechanism is still possible - it is a process of diverting one's focus from the source of a negative emotion into a "safe", yet related topic, which does not carry with it the power of those negative emotions (because it does not discuss the essence of those emotions). It is a way to use our will to avoid facing the problem. But this is not a process of reasoning. Reasoning and intellectualizing have one element in common - the use of our conscious mind and our will to consider specific content. They are both active, not passive, processes, but that is all they have in common.
In other words, we must not confuse reason with this defense mechanism. Reason is not inherently an enemy of emotions.

How can humans lie to themselves?

2010-07-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

It is possible to avoid recognizing a truth, which is already known to us on some level.

How is that possible?

The answer lays in the structure of our consciousness; we have a subconscious and a conscious mind. The subconscious contains everything we know and have stored away. The conscious is that content which we focus our mind on at any given moment. It draws both from the subconscious and from input from the world.

When there is something we experience in the world which is directly related to a low-level subconscious knowledge, we experience it automatically. We also experience emotions, which draw from the subconscious, automatically. However, to be conscious of more abstract or complex knowledge, we must focus our mind in order to perceive it.
People can spend years in psychotherapy digging into their subconscious to figure out what conclusions they have drawn and are drawing subconsciously. The content of our subconscious is not automatically conscious. If you've ever experienced an emotion which was based on a judgement which you could not decipher, Then you experienced first hand the separation between the conscious and the subconscious. Some content is buried so deep in the subconscious it takes a lot more than an act of will to bring to consciousness.

It is this fact that allows us to lie to ourselves. We can know something subconsciously but repress it and deny it - and thus make it absent from our immediate awareness.

A self-lie can only have so much power. Subconsciously, the knowledge is there. And that knowledge is being drawn and used to generate our emotions.
Moreover, when there is a collision between what a man is trying to tell himself and what his subconscious knows, he develops a sense of guilt and self-alienation.
Self-lies are possible - but they have their own nature - and they never go fully deep.

Imagine, for example, that a spouse cheats on their partner. They decide not to tell them about it and try to enjoy the love of the partner as if it were fully deserved and given by free choice and full knowledge. They lie to themselves when, during time with their partner they try to eliminate from their consciousness the nature of the choice their partner is making about them - an uninformed choice. They divert their mind from the fact that the affection they are receiving is not given by choice and that they do not deserve it.
When together, the spouse can divert their focus away from the betrayal and thus not experience negative emotions in an intense form. But subconsciously the knowledge cannot be erased, and therefore they cannot develop intimacy with their partner nor enjoy their love, nor feed on the partner's appreciation of them.

Animals cannot lie to themselves the same way that humans can't lie to themselves regarding very basic concepts. We cannot, for example, convince ourselves that a table we see is not really a table, but we can convince ourselves, to some degree, that we are motivated by a motivation which is different than the actual one. For example, telling oneself that one is motivated by a desire to help someone when in fact one wants something for oneself.

Animals cannot think in the way humans do - in that higher level, and therefore cannot lie.

So in conclusion, us humans can lie to ourselves by diverting our consciousness away from case-relevant and correct subconscious content, when that content is abstract and complex enough.
A self-lie can never go all the way because our subconscious generated emotions based on the subconscious content, whether or not we are aware of that content.
The emotion will always contain that which we hold subconsciously.

Indulging in belief is self-damaging

2010-05-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

Many people think that there is no harm in self-illusion if it makes someone happy.

I contend that this were true, if only it actually did make an overall positive impact on their lives.

Knowing reality is required for dealing with it. Are there some aspects of reality which we can afford not to know or to have false information of?
Probably some - like stars billions of light years away from us, have very little effect on our lives. Knowing the truth about them still matters because eventually knowing space is essential for our survival, but not as urgent as knowing the content of our food is healthy or that we are indeed mortals or that driving a car recklessly can kill us.

Faith, however, provides a temporary emotional relief at the expense of valuable information - knowledge that actually IS relevant to one's life.
If it were not relevant to one's life, people would not be so emotionally attached to their mystical beliefs. It is precisely because faith involves illusions on matters relevant to one's values that one clings to it.

For example - believing in god or in destiny. How can that possibly be harmful?
The answer is that believing in those things alleviates one's sense of responsibility for one's life. It imitates the psychological state of childhood, when a child has a parent watching over them - only in this case, no such parent actually exists.

A religious person can therefore go to war, not objectively evaluating the risk, thinking that god will protect them. They can engage in reckless behavior or invest money believing that their "fate" is not such that they would go bankrupt or get injured.
In reality, there is no such force of protection - thus these people remain in great danger without ever admitting or recognizing it.
When things go wrong, they simply hang on to their belief in god or in destiny even tighter and just "accept" whatever bad things happen as their fate.
A non-believer would realize that their lives are in their own hands and act to prevent or solve that bad situation.

Even a belief in astrology can be damaging. Some people make decisions based on astrology, such as making investments, getting into or refraining from getting into a relationship and so on.
In case of a relationship, astrology believers spend their time "reading the star maps" rather than actually getting to know the person. They may become so involved in their belief that it may even lead to marriage - only to end later in misery since the couple is not actually compatible.

If we are to be happy we must make it our business and goal to know the truth - both about the outside world and about our inner life. Our life and happiness depend on it.

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Pleasure in challenges vs. Fear of failure

2010-04-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

One crucial choice of approach to life we all face as children is how to deal with challenges.

The approach one develops and practices over the years affects one's self-esteem and one's ability to pursue one's values and goals.

Some adults find intense pleasure in complex challenges that take a long time to achieve, while others feel intimidated by them and shy away from them.

The reason for the difference is one's subconscious evaluation of one's ability to succeed, to acquire skills.
The man who takes pleasure in challenges feels pleasure because he judges what he is doing as being on a road to proving his own worth once more.
The one who dreads the challenge has the subconscious evaluation of themselves as being on the way to failure, of which every difficult step is further proof of that impending failure.
In reality they may have everything it takes to succeed had they had different motivation, but their motivation can be such a great barrier that they will never achieve that goal and start building their confidence.

It all starts in childhood when a child faces their first few challenges.
At an early stage kids seek immediate satisfaction without delay. If they solve challenges, they are of a simple, short-duration nature. If a child succeed in solving challenges with gradually increasing durations, eventually they learn that it pays off sometimes to pick tasks with delayed satisfaction. It starts from putting a cube through the right hole, to arranging some pictures in the right order, to building Lego models of an airplane (which takes an even longer time to complete) - to more complex tasks like programming.

It is not all a smooth sail - every kid faces those challenges in which they fails a number of times, and here comes the crucial waypoint where the two opposite approaches form.
The child, having failed several times, and still having the frame of mind of pursuing immediate gratification will face the decision to persist and try again or to give up and go back to the familiar, easy stuff they know how to do.
They have not yet experienced, at this stage, the value of delayed satisfaction and they barely have yet a concept of their own ability, because confidence develops based on success in challenges like the one they are facing in this case.

Here is where the parents have a crucial role in guiding their kids in the right direction. The parents can encourage the child to give up and go back to "fun stuff", or they can push him and slightly help the child persist in the goal.
They can teach the child that persistence in pursuing goals is a virtue, create a comfortable atmosphere for failing (so long as the child tries again) or teach the kid to take the easy road so that they don't have to see the kid upset.

Even given the right idea, a child still faces the choice of insisting on succeeding in a challenge or giving up, but having the right emotional background and (non-verbal) approach play a central role in what would occur to a child to choose.
A child learns a great deal what emotional reaction is appropriate for a situation.
You often see kids look at the parent's faces after some occurrence to observe their parent's expression and learn how they should react.
If they look at the parent's face after failing and see fear, they are likely to decide that this is the right response. But if the see a smile and quiet confidence, they learn that the right approach (or emotional background) is patience and calamity.

The reason this waypoint is so crucial is because those first attempts at a challenge are the base for a child's confidence and attitude toward challenges.
A child that has overcome the initial negative emotions and succeeded several times, develops a positive view of their own ability, of challenges, and learns to associate challenges with reward and self-esteem at the end.
A child that has repeatedly given up, on the other hand, forms a pattern and learns to associate challenges with failure and pain, creating a loop which cannot be broken until and unless the child (or the adult) decides to "do it anyway" and keep on doing it until they succeed.

So the conclusion?

If you have a child, teach them that the appropriate emotional background to challenges is relaxation and patience.
If you are an adult with a fear of failure (as I am, to some degree): Pick some tasks which you want to succeed in, and stick to them. Break them down to small steps which gradually increase in duration and go for it. It is only after succeeding over and over again despite temporary difficulties (or failure) that you will eventually build your confidence and learn to associate challenges with pleasure.

Your feeling about yourself and about what is possible for you in the world depends on it, so the investment is well worth the time.

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The value of Privacy

2010-04-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

Would you have a problem living in a house with glass walls? How about having all your conversations audible to all who are interested?

Most people, if not all, would find it very disturbing.

Why is it that people care so much about other eyes and other ears invading their space? Is it a weakness that needs to be overcome? An indication that one is not confident enough or that one does not have an independent mind?
Is it because one is ashamed of certain things and wants to deceive the world or hide one's identity?

No - to all of those. Not as the general answer to the question of the value of privacy.

Privacy is required for the protection of one's mental experience from foreign elements that can interfere, damage or destroy it.

I am not talking here of obvious things such as noise or people physically standing in one's way. Obviously, if a place is so crowded as to not allow one to spend time standing comfortably next to someone else or hear what they say, that is a disvalue. To understand the value of privacy as such I eliminate such conditions and concentrate only on the silent presence of the consciousness of other people, similar to how it would be like if your life were recorded and broadcasted over the internet.

So when I say that the presence of the consciousness of others is enough to disturb an experience, that is the sort of situation I am talking about.

In what way, you may ask, can the consciousness of others disturb our mental experience? These people are, in this hypothetical situation, just sitting there.

The answer is that keeping in mind the mental experience of others creates an emotional response which will mix with the emotional response to any experience. For example, suppose you are dancing to a favorite song of yours, you think you are all alone and let yourself loosen up and express your feelings when all of a sudden you spot someone looking at you, smiling. Their expression introduces into your mind a whole different universe than your own - a different way of looking at things, of judging things and feeling about them. So while you may value your dance a lot and see it as something precious, the person you caught looking at you may see it as something silly. While it may be entirely OK with you for someone else to consider something you do silly, at that moment of experiencing your own world so ecstatically, having the emotional view of someone else shoved into your mind is the mental equivalent of a punch to the face. Holding the two sets of emotions at the same time regarding something precious to you is very unpleasant.
In the rare case of having one's world view shared by a stranger the experience of "invasion of privacy" will be significantly reduced. However, in general privacy is a value because one cannot assume that strangers out there in the street share one's view of life or share the understanding of the meaning of one's actions.

Even if one has a fiercely independent mind, sharing one's emotions about a value (like being in love) with someone who would not understand it (or even ridicule it) would be a very unpleasant experience simply because of experiencing colliding emotions simultaneously.

You may ask further, why would anyone consider the experience of someone else? So what if I spotted this person looking at me - do I have to think about their expression? The answer is; yes, we do. We do this automatically.
We don't have to think further of the meaning of the expression we saw, but the initial understanding of what it stands for happens automatically in our subconscious.

Privacy is a value because we can act and pursue our values knowing that our experience will not be disturbed by foreign elements.

This remains true for wanting privacy with someone else. A couple having sex, for example, ideally share each others world perfectly. Knowing what the other is experiencing is a celebration of one's own experience - an enhancement of it. But if a group of strangers were to gather around in a stadium-like arrangement watching the act, that would introduce a foreign element. Those strangers can never possibly share the mutual understanding the couple has. The content of the crowd's mind is a foreign element that interferes with the concentration on the mind of the partner.

So... does it make sense to share your vulnerable moments and your precious experiences only with your close friends or those you trust would understand it? Yes, it does. Does honesty requires that one broadcasts everything openly to all? It most certainly does not. Honesty as a virtue has its context - and the context is a selfish pursuit of one's values.

In light of all of this, I find two more related topics interesting to analyze.

One is artists - especially of the performing arts. Art, unlike other professions, involves an open expression of the artist's emotions, view of life and personality. One can dance or perform mechanically, but to make it good one must open up and express fully one's emotions.
In the performing arts the dancer or actor must do it in front of a live audience. There is no privacy shielding one's inner world from others, save the fact that the setting is such that everyone expects the performer to act this way, and one is necessarily aware that others are watching their actions. I think a good dancer/ actor must therefore have the following two components: 1. The ability to maintain focus on their inner world despite a watching audience. 2. A positive view, as a whole, of the audience.
Without a recognition that somebody out there understands what the performer is doing and can admire it, there would be no motivation to "open up" and offer what one has inside to the world.

Second is pornography. In writing this piece I've come across the question of how come the people who play porn have no problem with the lack of privacy in having sex? The answer is, I believe, that they seek intimacy with a collective, based on a very shallow level of values. When a couple requires privacy it's because they want to guard the mutual understanding that they have about each other, and they want to be admired for those things they understand about each other. When one is having sex with a stranger for all to see - one has no understanding with a partner. Instead what they seek is admiration from a collective - being wanted by an abstraction represented by an unknown collective - based on the value of their physical appearance. They might even project on the crowd whatever values they want to be had for, but there is no need for privacy because in this sort of sex there is nothing to guard. In fact, if somebody shows up that knows the porn star well, that might be what they would want to guard themselves against, because that, ironically, threatens the abstract sexual relationship with people "out there".

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Modern art, Religion and self-esteem

2010-03-05T06:58:00.001-08:00

I will start with an interesting quote from Juliette Aristides's book, "Classical Painting Atelier", where she expresses her belief that modern art is rooted in a view of man as meaningless in a vast universe while art of the Renaissance was rooted in the belief that man is significant and eternal:

"In previous eras, artistic production was colored by the subtext that human beings, as children of God, have divine origins and that our existence is not transitory but eternal. This belief provided not only hope for the future, but the deep assurance of the intrinsic value of a human life. Artists reflected this vision of reality in their artwork, which enabled them to glimpse beauty in the face of tragedy and to portray monumental views of human life.
This is why Sandro Botticelli could paint his ethereal goddesses, revealing a reality only hinted at in the world as the black plague ravaged Europe.

The postmodern skeptic, faced with an unflinchingly pragmatic and scientific worldview, has no hope of an eternal future. Humanity, crawling out of the primordial soup, living briefly, and, returning to the mud, wrestles with a cosmic insignificance that is reflected in the art of our time. Beautiful figure paintings look hopelessly naive and outmoded in many art circles precisely because they no longer represent the predominating beliefs of the artistic and intellectual elite - the end of man is not glory but dust. Thus the art of the modern epoch has been largely nonrepresentational, characterized by a marred, earthbound, fragmented view of the human being. Beauty, eternity, and truth seem to have faded into a bygone era."

I find this quote to be a very interesting, and a largely true analysis, identifying the nature of art as stemming from the artist's view of the nature of the universe and man's place in it - from the artist's metaphysics.
I applaud Juliette's identification of the role of philosophy in art and explaining it so eloquently, but I am also glad to offer this correction to the (understandable) mistakes.
It is precisely the opposite: logic - which allowed great art to exist, when the terms are well defined.

It is not religion that provided the positive influence - the idea that a mystic belief in eternal life was responsible for all the good, while the so called ruthless "logic" and "scientific method" of our age has made men "disillusioned" with human grandeur is incorrect. This is what I wish to explain in this post.

For starters, it is not the length of our lives, nor facing the fact of their end that makes men glorious or insignificant. It is religion that has made men search for significance in the impossible - in that which is NOT man's nature that is responsible for this idea that eternal life is a condition for significance. It is precisely religion that has made men attempt to calculate their worth by eyes outside their own body - by how much 'the universe" "cares" for them, by how physically big they are compared to something... something which is not them. It is religion that teaches men to feel small and to be humble - not beautiful and proud.

A view of humans as "the children of god" is a twisted compliment. First, religion teaches men to seek significance outside themselves, bowing down, being humble before a great being - then they allow them a glimpse of self-esteem by being the creation of this superior being. Stomp them down, then offer them significance by allowing them to serve you.

It is reason - as an idea - as an identified method of how man gains knowledge and power over reality that has boosted men's self esteem - that made them feel big, important, potent. That has taught them to judge their worth through their own eyes - not through the eyes of some eternal, superior, impossible being.

The idea of "logic" she is presenting is the idea of modern philosophy, specifically Emmanuel Kant's idea of logic. According to him logic amounts to the recognition that man's senses distort reality and that we are incapable of knowledge. This view, which is total skepticism, may be non-religious, but it is just as devoid of values, just as belittling to human existence as religion is (or even more), because it tells men, in effect, that they are powerless to know anything, except that they can know nothing.

It is proper logic, discovered by Aristotle, preserved and revived through history that is responsible for any beauty people saw in human existence.
A creature, crawling with fear before an unknowable universe cannot feel beautiful or regard other human beings as beautiful.
It is only a being equipped with the power to know that can feel confident, that can use this confidence to wander into mystical paths, trying to bring their power of cognition into those realms - still, it is not mysticism that is responsible for their sense of confidence, but the idea that they are capable of knowing - of understanding the universe, and as a result capable of survival, success, enjoyment, values.

Philosophically, it is indeed this view of man as little and insignificant that has brought forth modern art. Accepting the view that virtue consists of recognizing their cognitive impotency - they present their distorted paintings as if they were a source of pride. Psychologically, these paintings are the cry of men desperate for self esteem and a sense of importance and personal identity, which they seek by screaming at the world that no one can know anything, that they are special because they recognize it and manage to present "nothingness" better than anyone else.
Indeed, they do present human "nothingness" better than anyone else, though that is hardly a compliment.

Lastly, Aristides mentions that human life has "intrinsic value". This, is again a mistaken view stemming from religion. To whom would human life be "of value"? The only answer according to religion is "god" or "the universe". However, those entities are not conscious. "The universe" does not value. Only human beings do. And indeed, to each human being individually, life, when the conditions allow happiness, are worth living. The value, however, is not intrinsic.
Well, a religion mind thinks, "if human beings are not important to god or to the universe - how can they be important?". "If human life has no such intrinsic value- how can anyone view them as significant at all?"

The answer is made possible by self-esteem, which is supported by logic. What makes human life worth living - what makes them a value to any particular individual? It is priceless moments of enjoyment - it is a moment of feeling pride at one's own creation, moments of having a great laugh or admiring a friend or enjoying the admiration of a lover; it is times of resting at one's home or walking outside and thinking that the world is wonderful - it is everything good that is possible for us to experience.

This good is made possible by our power to know, and, as a result; to create, judge and appreciate that which is around us.
Philosophically - the main idea is whether we, as human beings, have the power to know or not. Psychologically, this translate to a feeling of self esteem or its lack. In art, this translates into beautiful figures or corrupt and ugly ones (or to the total decay or random shapes).

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What is Selfishness?

2010-02-18T11:23:00.001-08:00

Before I get into what selfishness is I want to briefly answer - why is it important to know what is selfishness and what is not?
The reason is that selfishness is a fundamental principle - whom are you live for - for yourself or for others, and what does it even mean to live for yourself? The answer to these questions can determine the course of your life, the kind of actions you take and the emotional reward you ultimately receive from your life.
Secondly, selfishness is an ethical issue. If one misidentifies what selfishness is, one can experience unearned guilt or live a life which is not as good as one could have.

The common notion of selfishness is that of a person who lacks any concern for the values of others, someone who does not value other people, does not value fairness, justice, or does not see the need to return a value for a value. It is someone who always wants to get "favors" but at the same time cannot see why anyone would bother them asking for something in return. They can think of no good reason why they should not be served by others, for no benefit to those others whatsoever. Someone who exploits others at the blink of an eye and can care for nothing but their own ends.
This view of 'selfishnes' is lamped together with any kind of behavior that puts one's own pleasure before the pleasure of others, creating a devastating "package deal".

The person who kills and steals and the person who produces and earns are considered as having the same moral quality, since they both do it to promote their own ends.

Is it any wonder, then, that people condemn selfishness - and is it any wonder that so many people feel guilty for any kind of happiness or enjoyment they pursue for themselves, not for others?

The fault here is in the basic understanding of what selfishness is, and in replacing "lack of value for human life" with "selfishness".

One of Ayn Rand's greatest achievements was her identification of the true meaning of "selfishness". It redeemed morality, it created the basis on which people could be happy. It identified a concept which allows men to experience a moral sense of life, to be the hero of their own movie and at the same time pursue their own life and happiness. It allowed men to stand proud beside their achievements instead of apologizing for them - it allowed men to have self-esteem and to regard themselves as worthy of pleasure.

So let us start with basic questions and get deeper into the concept of "selfishness" to get a clear understanding of what it IS.

A selfish man is one who acts for his own sake - one whose actions are directed to benefit oneself. I would quickly summarize it by: "I am doing this for me".
This, however, is not as simple as it sounds. What constitutes doing something "for yourself"? Is it gratification of emotions, regardless of their source? Is it pursuit of some ends, regardless of their nature? Is a man driven by chronic anxiety, trying to destroy other people's happiness a "selfish bastard"?
The answer is not as simple as it first appears to be. To understand what it means to "do something for yourself" we need to know what constitutes an objective benefit to someone.
If one is to be the beneficiary of one's own actions, one must first know what constitutes "benefit".
If one has no idea what is good for oneself, then one's actions cannot logically be selfish, since "I am doing this for me" is empty of meaning if one has no idea if that action is good for one or not.

Many regard selfishness as acting for the gratification of one's emotions. There is some truth to that, but only given the right context.

The only meaning life has, the only thing that makes life worthwhile, that rewards us for living - is pleasurable emotions, like love, happiness, pride and so on. The selfish man indeed then goes after these positive emotions and the gratification of other emotions. Putting anything else above the achievement of one's happiness is not selfish - because by the nature of our body and mind, the only benefit we have for anything in life is positive emotions.
This is the key to what "selfishness" is. The ultimate benefit, by our nature, is pleasurable emotions. Pursuing the only thing which is, by our nature, rewarding, is therefore the essence of selfishness.

This however, does not mean that "anything goes", that whatever emotions one happens to gratify are a selfish action. If a man feels chronic anxiety and jealousy and acts to gratify his need for destruction he is most definitely not selfish because he does not put his happiness as his highest goal. He rather lets whatever petty emotions and destructive premises he has take over his life, motivation and actions. He gives up on happiness entirely. He gives up self esteem. He gives up thinking and trying to decide what would be the best course of action. He replaces all of this with the ease of drifting on whatever emotions happen to come his way and the satisfaction and relief of jealousy and self-doubt.

Selfishness, is actually demanding. Because happiness is demanding.

Consider another example: someone who has adopted the idea of altruism as an ideal and feels a sense of satisfaction every time they sacrifice something for the sake of someone else. For example, they work for months saving up to buy something they want very much, and end up giving it to the son of their friends who happen to come over for a visit, because he really wants it. They feel pain for the loss of the item, but a feeling of satisfaction from "doing the right thing". Is that a selfish action, since they acted to gain satisfaction?
No, because to be selfish means to actually ACT on the principle of doing that which is the best for one's life. The emotion is nothing but an expression of a subconsciously accepted altruism. If one acts to satisfy it one surrenders fully to altruism, and most definitely does NOT act selfishly. Selfishness is not satisfaction of emotions regardless of their cause - selfishness is satisfying one's emotions which are validated to be "on the right track".

So now how does one measure what "the right track" is? Is it just a matter of arbitrary opinion of what one "should do"? No. Recall that in essence selfishness is acting to achieve pleasurable emotions - the best possible to you. Not everything will achieve a feeling of happiness, not everything achieves self esteem, which is a requirement of happiness.

It follows then that a selfish man follows, to the best of his knowledge, the principles which would lead to his happiness and that he does not surrender to any "temptation" that could endanger his happiness.

Let us look at a few examples.

Suppose one is blamed that one is bad for wanting to keep something one values all to oneself. One is told that one should share. One may, out of good faith in people, think that one may indeed be doing something wrong and one is facing a danger of losing friends or the appreciation of the people who bring up the accusation. Here one faces a decision: Will one bypass one's judgment and follow that of others - should one give up that value based on the judgment of others that it is the right thing to do, or should one act based on one's own conclusions? These two are not equal, not both are selfish.
If one decides to take others on their word, one gives up one's judgment and replaces it with others'. Not only that, but one actually gives up one's material goods. the dominant feeling one can expect from such a choice is a sense of loss of control. If it is not one's mind leading one's decisions - whose mind is it? Can one feel secure sitting in a car driven by someone else?
The second choice may be painful because it involves the loss of some people's approval - but one is making a selfish choice here, because acting based on one's own conclusions, not those of others, is a requirement of life and because one chooses to keep material values one has earned. In time one may discover what mistake those people made in demanding a sacrifice and cease to feel a sense of loss over their withdrawn approval.
One's own approval of oneself must always be a primary and come before others' approval if one is to be happy. Whenever one acts on this principle, one is acting selfishly because one is putting one's happiness and mental health above all else.

Or how about a case in which no other people are involved - just one man and his mind. One can be selfish or non-selfish even living completely alone. Suppose one day one experiences an emotion one considers to be a sign of someone lame of bad. It could be a feeling of helplessness, frustration, jealousy, fear and so on. One faces a choice here: To recognize the existence of the emotion, or to try to pretend as if the emotion never existed. No other people are involved in such a decision, yet only one path is selfish.
Why? Because only one path puts one's happiness above all else.
If one tries to pretend that one did not feel what one felt, one seals in the judgment of being bad, or not as good as one had expected. The judgment may be entirely unjustified or based on wrong premises, but if one never looks into it one can never rectify the situation.
Choosing to run away from the situation may alleviate one's immediate fear, but it is not a selfish choice since it does not put one's happiness above all else. In fact running away is a choice that seals in self-doubt.

This is the reason I call my blog "psychology of selfishness"; the central theme of the blog is how to live in a selfish way: in a way that puts your own happiness above all else.

Here is another common choice we face in life: To think or not to think? In any given situation one has the choice to use one's mind to seek the truth or to use one's mind in a different way. For example, on a desert island one can choose to put effort into thinking how to improve one's life, comfort and chances of survival and rescue or one can choose to let self pity take over, hide behind a rock and wait for death.
In modern society one can choose to discover the truth in every subject or to try to escape any recognition of failure. To close one's eyes and try to pretend that bad things are not happening. The selfish choice here, again, is one that puts one's happiness and one's life above all else - the choice to think. Because only by thinking and having knowledge, correct knowledge, can one act in an efficient way that actually promotes one's goals and life. Choosing not to think may provide a temporary escape but the price is a sense of loss of control, lack of self esteem and ultimately losing material property as well (or never gaining it).

The selfish is acting to achieve that which is good for you. We may make mistakes identifying it in specific situations, but so long as one holds the right principles and acts by them, one is selfish.

Take the case of Gail Wynand from Ayn Rand's book "The fountainhead". Gail was wrong on choosing the principle by which he lived. Gail thought he was acting in his self-interest by living the way he did, but despite his thought he lived an unselfish life and he was not happy.
Growing up, Gail was a poor boy who worked at "dirty", low-level jobs receiving orders from people which were morally and intellectually inferior to him. Gail grew up to discover that many honest people do not survive in the world. He was furious that evil wins, and decided to let that become the ruling idea in his life. He was so focused on the injustice that he let go of every personal desire to focus only on one: Never to receive another order from a low life. Never to have less power than the others. He became the owner of a tabloid whose content he despised but which brought him a lot of money and power. His life's creation was one which he despised and he worked to give others what they please, but never what Gail Wynand pleased.
Gail's mistake was not an error in an application of a principle, but error in the entire principle. The choice he made as a teenager was to base his life's goal not in his happiness, but in preventing evil from having financial superiority over him. It is an honest mistake, and one can easily understand how an honest man might feel so angry at the world - but when he made that anger into the ruling factor of his life he made his relation to other men the ruling idea and motivation of his life. He was no longer living for himself and indeed he spent his entire career writing things that pleased others.
This example shows that it is not enough to think that one is acting in one's best interest. To be selfish one must actually adopt and live by principles that place one's happiness above all else.

The conventional view of selfishness is wrong. Those people who have no grasp of the value of other people have a psychological problem. The "give me give me give me" mentality and "how rude, you expect something back?" is not the psychology of a selfish person but rather of an unhappy individual who receives no authentic enjoyment from the things he or she have. Those who are capable of understanding the values of others (that something can be precious to someone else) are those who experience such value themselves toward the things they love.
By equating this mentality with any desire to enjoy that which one has earned, one is sentencing oneself to a lifetime of guilt.
By saying that "everyone is selfish" because they act to gratify their emotions, one ends up ignoring the fact that happiness has specific requirements and demands.

"Selfishness" means to act by the principle by which your actions are directed to benefit you, to make you happy. It means that the principles by which you lead your life place nothing above your happiness.

Being selfish is both demanding, moral and good for you.

Recommended reading (on which my writing is based on, or describes): "The virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand (specifically the article "Isn't everyone selfish" from that book) and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Related article: Selfishness in relationships from my blog.

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Good looks as a rational value

2010-02-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Is it shallow to care how one looks in the eyes of others? Is it a sign of some psychological weakness?

The problem is in the question itself. The action, or intention itself - is neither good nor bad - it depends on the wider context of an individual's psychology.

Some use good looks as a way to achieve "social stature" which they use as a replacement for self esteem. If you've ever wondered about the frantic way some people try to sell their life as a success story of a top model on social sites like Facebook, the above, in my opinion, is the reason.

However there are those who take pleasure openly in being aesthetically valued and enjoyed by others.
For them being appreciated for their looks, dressing up in the morning to welcome a world worth showing one's beauty to - is a pursuit of a rational value.

The appearance of a human being can communicate beauty which can not be found in nature and not in the most sensational sunset: It is beauty of character.
A proud way of standing, a hidden smile ready to bloom for the right occasion are a sight to enjoy for every man with a positive feeling about people and life.

A physical beauty to match a beautiful character reflects spiritual perfection in physical form and integrates them (as I will explain later in more detail). This integration between the spiritual and the physical is a cognitive need that comes from the nature of our mind as holding knowledge abstractly.

In what way can we "see" nobility, or pride? Only in physical, material, tangible things like facial expressions, body language and - body structure and facial features.
Spirituality has no visibility except through the material.
You can see this need to express spiritual perfection through physical perfection in art, where heroes have perfect proportions in addition to the right body language and expression. [See example]

Not every element in one's physical appearance reflects on one's character. If one is tough and truthful, it will reflect in one's habitual way of holding one's facial muscles. If one is proud and confident, it will show in one's manner of standing and walking. Obesity, in many cases, is an expression of psychological stress. But something like a 90-60-90 figure vs. a 80-70-90 figure (less feminine looking) reflects no spiritual trait.
It still remains, however, that physical beauty, even of the kind that does not reflect traits of character, creates an integration of the spiritual and physical in the viewer's mind, as can be seen in art.

Appreciation, in general, from others one appreciates is a rational value, even a psychological need. If one considers oneself worthy of appreciation then getting that appreciation from others is a tremendous value and pleasure.
The human mind is a powerful thing, when others are logical; their opinions mirror our own understanding of reality.
Self-esteem is a deep psychological need and a value one cannot live without. When our own recognition of our worth and achievements is reflected to us by others, we experience heightened awareness of the reality of our own value, which is very pleasurable.

Allowing others to enjoy one's physical beauty compliments that need (for people of self-esteem).

Consider the wonderful things physical beauty allows us to celebrate:
The romantic atmosphere of a date in which both look phenomenal (especially the woman) is largely due to the declaration that beauty is a great way to celebrate and enhance finding each other valuable.
When a woman takes special care to dress up for a date she is implicitly communicating to her partner that she sees him as a value and because of that getting his appreciation and enjoyment from her looks is a value to her - something she is willing to put the time into.

Investing in one's look on every day basis is a way to celebrate a world in which one is worthy of being seen and enjoyed by others. It is a reflection of seeing the world as good - as a place inhabited by good people (perhaps not all, or even many - but it at least expresses the recognition that some exist).

Notice that when one views the world as bad and people as evil one looses the desire to look good (I am talking about a rational person here, not about those who want to look good to win a competition with their friends).

Ever wondered why some women like shopping so much? Here is why: A piece of clothing that compliments one's figure and matches a certain event or atmosphere allows one to experience how one would like to be seen, evaluated and experienced by someone else in a certain occasion.

Clothes are like a piece of a fantasy, half real, stored in one's closet for future use. Women take pleasure in storing such fantasies in their closet because that makes the fantasies half real - a promise for an enjoyable future.
For example, buying a dress that emphasizes a woman's feminine features holds the romantic fantasy of a magical evening out with someone she admires. An elegant looking suit is a way to celebrate one's image as a good worker, appreciated as such by others, and so on.

The same is true for men, but more so for women because in romantic relationships women are the ones being pursued (although, this is another topic which I will leave for another time).

And in conclusion, take Will Smith's words on the value of good looks:

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Conformity as an enemy of self-esteem

2010-02-01T19:32:00.000-08:00

Conformity is the process by which one adjusts one's behavior, values and beliefs to those which one holds as acceptable by other people.

If one observes a child or an adult trying to conform, one can see that the underlying emotion in their behavior is fear and a sense of loss of control.
They are driven by fear to say certain "acceptable" things that will make them feel that they belong. They are always in a pursuit of pleasing some external authority and never find the serenity of self-approval and self-appreciation.

Conformity is not just a harmless habit, which comes down to nothing more than making sure to wear the right brand of jeans and to exhibit the right kind of opinions and interests - these are merely the symptoms, the external manifestations, of a deep spiritual, psychological problem.

Conformity is a damaging idea that targets nothing short of an individual's entire spiritual life: One's self-esteem, sense of personal identity, enjoyment of values and the possibility of any fulfilling relationship.

Most parents not realizing this, encourage their children to conform, thinking that "a child needs to have friends", "a child needs to learn to be socially acceptable to succeed in this world".
Little do they know that they ensure that if the child has any friends by this method, there is nothing left but an empty puppet to enjoy them.
If an individual cannot enjoy friends, what's the point of having them? But the damage goes much deeper and eliminates not just one's ability to enjoy friends, but one's ability to enjoy - anything.

Teaching a child that conformity is good does not take a full blown indoctrination - it can be done by hints. For example, if a child expresses concern that he is "not like the other kids" in some regard, the parent can either ensure him that being himself is the good, or the parent can help the child be like the others, in which case, the parent would be implicitly teaching the child that this is the right course of action.
Parents can teach a kid "not to make a fas" about his or her personal emotions in order to maintain a socially acceptable image, or they can teach them that the child's inner life matters more than social appearance by showing such preference themselves.
Then, parents also teach their kids how to judge themselves by showing what they themselves appreciate about what the child does. If parents show no appreciation for a child's independent thinking and creativity, but show great pleasure when he brings 5 friends home - what kind of lesson are they teaching their kid?

When one accepts conformity, one accepts a standard by which to judge oneself - one attempts to switch the role of the judge to other people. However, by the nature of SELF-esteem, that is not possible. One's subconscious then attempts to evaluate one's worth by how well one considers oneself socially acceptable, how much and how many people like him or her, how comfortable people feel around him, how much they would appreciate his jokes, how well he falls under what people consider "the norm".
One turns oneself into an empty vessel whose worth is measured by how well one can read the social circumstances and adjust to be liked and to fit the social standards. Being an "outsider", different, someone who is not socially accepted by others creates, under this standard, a feeling of inadequacy, guilt and self-doubt. One thinks "if others don't like me, something must be wrong with me".

Externally, one picks one's clothes by the impression they make on others, not by one's own preference (which is never allowed to develop). One attempts to get friends that are "cool" - not ones that one has personal interest in (personal interests are eliminated over time in favor of the "acceptable" ones). If other people in one's environment have a girlfriend or a boyfriend one feels compelled to get one too, otherwise one feels inadequate - lacking worth. If other people have a certain amount of income or lifestyle, one tries to "live up" to it.

Internally, one gradually loses sense of personal identity and loses touch with one's values (depending to what extent one accept conformity as valid). It is not possible, under the emotional pressure of trying to pretend to be someone one's not, to continue to feel affection for one's values. One's values become worthless if they are outside social acceptances.
For example, if one has a socially unacceptable hobby (say, a guy that loves the ballet), one feels that to be any good, one must denounce it to fit into what is socially acceptable. If one finds certain things funny, but others do not - one attempts to change one's sense of humor.
It is not merely approval in the eyes of others a conformist seeks - but approval in one's own eyes by changing who one is.
It is in one's own mind that one feels inadequate if one fails to be "like the other kids". Approval from others becomes not a nice emotional bonus, but a pathological need.

However, achieving approval does not solve the chronic self-doubt. Even the most popular kid in the class is still driven by chronic fear, even more than others who are less popular. Why is that so? The reason is that conformity undercuts self-esteem, regardless of how well one becomes socially accepted by others.

Imagine you were asked to walk on an invisible bridge above an abyss - would you feel any better if 100 people told you the bridge is there once you make the first step? You reach down and feel nothing, you try to knock on it but nothing shows any resistance nor makes a sound. The same thing works in regard to self-esteem. When using conformity as a standard one can only rely on others to know that one is worth something. One has no personal evidence of it - no achievement (they are all discarded in favor of social acceptance), no spiritual traits one considers admirable (they are all discarded), and one learns that one cannot rely on oneself to protect one's values on the fly. A kid that accepts conformity may discover one day, to his or her amazement, that they threw away a favorite toy in the blink of an eye to prove to someone that they are "cool".

One learns that one is not trustworthy to maintain one's life, to achieve things or to protect what matters to one.
Even the most popular kid in class (or in adult life) experiences this - and the more popular they are the more detached from personal values they become.
The feeling of having one's personal identity disappear in the presence of others creates a chronic dread from the company of people, especially public speaking and makes one very hostile to independent people. It also prevents one from developing intimate relationships because one always sees others as something to "please", not as a real person.
Healthy relationships are built on mutual appreciation. One cannot enjoy appreciation nor give it if one gives up personal identity and a standard of values.

Since conformity is subconscious and automated, one may not even realize why one is experiencing such emotions, but only that, one feels tremendous pressure to act in a way others would approve of.

It could be limited to a feeling of pressure to smile to others and act pleasant and "normal", it could go deeper into a need to make one's jokes fit that which is "conventional" or in severe cases, an individual loses all personal identity and becomes a bitter clone of "the perfect social man" (in which case, not accidentally, they are preoccupied preaching acceptance of others, altruism and compassion and take every opportunity to crusade and blame anyone who is not "social" as a way to rationalize their emotional situation).

To concretize better how conformity is a psychological problem, let's contrast it to healthy self-esteem. How can one maintain stable self-esteem?
Self esteem comes from staying loyal to one's standard of judging people and of having one's standard grounded in reality.
For example, if one notices while growing up that lies and dishonesty are disastrous to human beings and one concludes that honesty is a virtue - then one clings to it no matter what. Suppose some person comes along and says "telling the truth is for suckers. The cool ones are those who can deceive others and get what they want from them" - then one does not surrender one's value of honesty in favor of living up to the other person's standard. If one does this consistently, one maintains healthy SELF ESTEEM - in the full sense of the words, and this feeling of serenity and confidence is always present in one's mind regardless of the circumstances or what other people think of one.

One gains self esteem from living up to one's ethical values and placing nothing above one's own judgement of what those values should be, based on one's experiences and knowledge. The hallmark of self esteem is selfishness - by which I don't mean the conventional term for "selfishness" as exploitation, but someone who always acts for his or her own benefit - in every second of the day one places nothing above one's own enjoyment (long and short term).

The trouble with conformity is that it becomes, after childhood, a subconscious, automatic way of thinking and feeling. One may act in ways that do not seem to be in pursuit of one's happiness, but to satisfy some other subconscious need. If one accepts the idea of conformity even for a limited time in childhood, then if left unchecked one is likely to suffer some automatic reactions relating to conformity as an adult.

The way to solve it, as with anything else, is to develop self awareness. To become aware of one's feelings and subconscious thoughts and then to correct them time and time again (if they are in need of correction). It is also important to go back to childhood memories and remember cases in which conformity was an issue. Thinking back to such cases and realizing what would have been the right course of action and the right response is another step in reprogramming your subconscious with the right values and standard.

Self-esteem is not automatic. It requires effort, judgment, refusal to compromise on one's values - but the result is a sense of serenity which is at the base of happiness and enjoyment of life.

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Reason and Motive - what is the difference?

2010-01-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

Reason and motive are often used interchangeably, but they are two distinct things.

A murderer driven by jealousy and rage has a motive: To cause harm to what he conceives as the source of his pain: his cheating wife. He is driven by his emotions to take an irrational action which he does not validate with logic (though he could exercise self-control and do that). His motive is jealousy, his reason? none.

If I take an umbrella on a sunny day my reason may be that the weather forecast said it would rain later in the day. In this case my decision is conscious and based on facts I have considered. My motive? the automatic distant emotion arising from the thought of being wet and having to run around if I get stuck in the rain without an umbrella. Both the reason and the motive are: not to get wet, but the reason is the conscious thought and the motive is the accompanying emotion.

If I rob a bank and force everyone to stay on the floor my reason is that if they are not on the floor they would be in a better position to resists me or to activate the alarm. The action of robbing a bank may be irrational, but the immediate decision to force people to stay on the floor is grounded in a conscious decision guided by facts. The reason to force people to stay on the floor, therefore, is to prevent resistance.

If I heard a speech I like a lot and feel an urge to stand up and applaud - I have a motive: A desire to express appreciation of something and to repay the wonderful individual who gave the speech. I may not be aware of why I feel an urge to stand up and applaud - but doing so has a motive. If, additionally, I am aware of why I want to applaud and the benefit it may bring me - then I stand up and act on it - it also becomes my reason for the action.

In other words: motive is referring to the emotional propelling force for an action while reason is referring to the conscious thinking process and conscious goal behind an action.

Every action has a motive, even if one is not aware of that motive; we cannot act without an emotion motivating an action; but not all actions have a reason. When someone is taking an action based on conscious thinking, the reason and the motive for it become two sides of the same coin (which is incidentally why "reason" and "motive" are often used interchangeably).
The question: "why did you do it?" is one, but its answer can be one of three: A reason (with a motive), a motive without a reason, or something which is entirely beyond a man's control (like an act of sheer insanity, or involuntary physical movement; neither of which have a reason nor a motive).

Let me break it down a bit more to make it clear: A reason necessarily comes with a motive and they are two sides of the same coin. How so? a conscious value judgement (deciding something is good for me or bad for me) is always coupled with an emotion. The emotion then serves as a motivation. For example: Why do I pursue a productive activity such as writing? The reason is a conscious decision to make money while satisfying a psychological need of self-esteem. I know that doing a productive activity is good for my life and I consciously decide to do it for this reason. The motivation is the emotion resulting from the subconscious recognition that productive activity has a positive effect on my life.
If my subconscious judgment, however, is not in line with my conscious thoughts then I would not be motivated to take the action. It is only to the extent that the subconscious is "persuaded" of the validity of the conscious value judgement that one can be motivated to take the action, and then the reason and the motive become one (or rather, two sides of the same thing).

Some may rationalize an action to try to provide a false reason for an action which actually had a different motive, in which case, the reason is false and the motive is real. For example: Say a guy is too shy to make a pass at a girl he likes. One day he decides to go to her house to talk. He tells the girl, and tries to convince himself that he went there to tell her that some class has been canceled, to save her time, but in fact that was not the reason he went there at all: He goes there to try to establish a relationship. In this case the so called "reason" is a rationalization. The motive is the real one and the action, in fact, has no reason, since the guy never made a conscious decision to make a pass at the girl.
If he did, in fact, tell himself in the privacy of his own mind that he is going there to try to start a relationship then it becomes his reason for going there, even if he hides it from others.

The reason for an action is not something that is always kept conscious. As I am writing this post, for example, I do not consciously think, at every moment, of the goal of writing it. The recognition of the goal stays in the background, as a thought and emotion. This does not mean that the action only has a motive but not a reason, just as one can know that 2+2=4 ALL the time, even though one rarely thinks about it. Knowing something consciously does not mean one constantly has to think about it. But for an action to have a reason the goal must be identified prior to the action. In many cases the reason is so well automatized one rarely stops to think about it. Why do you take your wallet when you go out? The reason is clear: to be able to buy whatever is necessary to function and enjoy the day (like a bus ticket, food coffee etc'). The reason is so clear one rarely stops to think of this consciously. Instead one just makes sure to take one's wallet before going out. This action does have a reason (and not just a motive) even though one does not stop to conscious reconsider the goal every single time.
It is enough that one is aware of the goal (of the value judgement) to make it a reason.

A motive can be good or bad, based on right ideas or wrong ideas. One can be motivated by an unrecognized desire for justice or by a desire to destroy out of envy. In either case, it is always better for one to be aware of the motive for an action and make a conscious decision about it, to the best of one's ability.

My goals in writing this blog

2010-01-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

Writing this blog is not an easy task, but it is very satisfying.

My philosophy of writing about anything is to make it ASAP: As simple as possible. True understanding is the ability to break a complex subject into its simple elements. To connect an abstract idea to concrete cases in reality, and to bring the light-full feeling of clarity to every subject I write about.

To achieve this I demand of myself the strictest use of logic. I look at all my experiences, what they have in common and draw my conclusions based on them. Then I take those conclusions and check against all cases again, trying to see if there are some cases which suggest that the conclusions are incorrect or missing something. This process is called "integration" of knowledge (as some of your know).

Then, it is not enough to reach conclusions. I am passionate about presenting them in a way that makes it easy to understand them. I put myself in the shoes of someone with complete ignorance of the subject (usually, myself before I ever thought of those ideas) and aim my writing to explain it to that individual in the right order, while keeping in mind that the value the article holds needs to be communicated implicitly as well. I never expect a reader to take me on faith regarding the value of what I am about to write about: I am always aware that such value needs to be communicated right from the start of a piece.
It is not a gimmick to attract audience - as some writers see it, but an essential part of writing properly.

I love writing this blog; I love the times of brain wrecking effort that goes into understanding new subjects, I love thinking of good ways to break down and present a subject.
I love writing things that can help people change their life for the better, and indeed many of the posts are aimed at challenging misconceptions and psychological problems that undercut happiness.
I get tremendous satisfaction knowing something I write has helped someone become more motivated to improve their lives or has given them something meaningful to think about.

I write my blog for all these reasons; for the selfish satisfaction I get from gaining knowledge and doing a good job providing it to others.

However, these are not ends in themselves: The satisfaction I get from writing is not enough to motivate me to write this blog, nor to spend the hours of mental effort to produce high quality articles. I write to eventually make money. This is why I have a donation option. I would therefore appreciate if you donate even a small amount, just to show your support and appreciation. Consider it as if you were hiring me to write more: it is exactly what it is.

This blog is not about sharing fun experiences from my daily life. It is not political activism. It is about improving people's emotional quality of life.
This requires abstract knowledge - discovering principles of psychology central to life.
Because of that, writing the blog is not a piece of cake. It is not something I can write effortlessly as sharing some daily experience with a friend. Writing a single piece takes days and hours, hours of sitting at the computer, thinking of every sentence and days (or even months) of thinking out the problem in my head. It is like writing a scientific journal.

I have plenty of topics I would like to write about, but, on a personal note, making not a single dime out of writing everything I have so far, despite the countless hours I have put into writing, I have lost the motivation to do the final editing, which is why you are seeing less content.

I therefore ask my readers to donate to keep the blog running and to get new content, if you find that the blog has the potential to add value to your life.

Thank you for being my reader and for any future contribution you might give.

Modesty, honesty and friends

2009-12-28T05:16:00.000-08:00

To be yourself or not to be yourself? To hide your greatness, you achievements, or to share them with others?

Some, perhaps many, respond with jealousy and resentment to achievements that surpass their own.
This poses a potential down side to being good, and to being open about it. Will others not like me as much? Maybe it will be some of my closest friends?

I believe we all encounter this question at some point of our lives, maybe on the first time of getting a better grade in a test than someone else or achieving a great figure.

It is not a good idea to hide one's greatness. It is not a good idea to fake modesty.

Others may not like who you are, others may not like that you are better than them at something. Those others are not worth keeping around as friends. A friend is someone who helps you flourish, someone who encourages you to become the best that you can be and is there to celebrate it with you when you achieve it (and vice versa).

A friend is someone who loves you for who you are: YOUR sense of humor, YOUR way of thinking, YOUR taste in music, people, activities and the things you are good at.

Being open and proud of your achievements in communication with others achieves a double purpose: First, it encourages others to achieve the best that they can achieve and creates an environment where success is greeted with benevolence. Second, it allows others to know you and you to know others and tell apart the people who enjoy the sight of an achievement from those who look down at it.

Being honest requires courage, because so many things in our lives depend on how others feel about us and our actions, and yet honesty is the best way to get real friends who will love you for who you are and help you grow.

Give up being yourself, and you give up everything.

Wishing you a happy holiday...

2009-12-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

Work, Games and self-esteem

2009-11-18T19:45:00.000-08:00

Often people look at work as a synonym of necessary punishment, while they look at games as something fun, desirable and totally different.

But in fact, work and games have a common psychological goal. Psychologically they provide the same end in different forms.

Consider what one gets out of games (like computer games): Primarily, it is a sense of accomplishment, of achieving a prize and performing efficiently. Performing well in a game, advancing in a game provides an uplifting feeling of excitement - it is the essence of having a good time playing. Contrast it with failing repeatedly at some task in a game: it is a very frustrating experience. Nobody would want to play a game in which success is impossible.

One might ask: Well, if the purpose of games is to provide a sense of accomplishment, why not make them super easy so that anyone can do it effortlessly? The reason is that such setting would not provide a sense of accomplishment. If a game is too easy it becomes boring and cannot provide that uplifting feeling of efficiency. Babies may find interest in a sorting bucket game, but for an adult such a game is utterly boring. If forced to play one would experience such a game as "work".

The feeling of efficiency cannot be faked by making a game too easy. A game, to be good, must provide the means of genuinely earning the feeling of accomplishment by providing a decent challenge.

The essence of the uplifting feeling is self-esteem: the recognition that one is performing well, that one is good: good for succeeding at things, achieving one's goals and gaining values.

Another important part of games is the reward. Successful action provides rewards like coins, life points, neat items, new quests, score bonus etc'.

One might ask, if games are about rewards, why aren't games designed to give rewards without effort? Like, say, design 'Diablo' so that the player gets the best weapons and armor right away, and the player is so powerful that just by showing up all the enemies in a scene drop dead. The reason is that no one would buy such a game. Effort and challenge are good, they are a necessary ingredient in gaining self esteem and a sense of efficacy.

Games involve training and effort. Games have and need to have the option of failure. These are usually the elements that are looked down upon in work. A work is said to be unpleasant because it requires effort, because it does not come easy and because it has the option of failure. But these all are, in fact, essential elements of any game.

Work, apart from being a necessity for living, has the exact elements as in a game. One is constantly after some goals and the goals and the achievement of those goals brings about a reward and a feeling of accomplishment.

If a job is too difficult for one's ability, or it provides nothing but obstacles and no rewards it becomes like a game in which it is impossible to succeed and equally frustrating. If a job is well adjusted to one's ability and provides immediate rewards for successful actions it becomes closer to the feeling of a game.

As evidence, notice that people who are disappointed or stuck in their work, often find themselves drawn to games, sometimes to the point of addiction or replacing work time.

The reason is that games provide a replacement for a feeling of efficacy that is normally attained at work.

So what are the differences between game and work?

The main difference is: A game is designed to provide short-term satisfaction (immediate gratification) for successful actions, by allowing to get the required skill in a short amount of time.

A good game always keeps the required level of skill within short-term limits. The difficulty of a game progresses gradually, always allowing the player to achieve success within a relatively short amount of time.

A game is designed to always reward for successful actions, and provide the rewards immediately, without a need to wait for the end of the month, year or 7 years of med-school.

This is unlike work, in which training can take years and may seem unsuccessful for long periods of time. The learning curve may not be well adjusted to one's ability but very steep at times. The reward does not immediately fall from the sky like coins or score points, but requires waiting.

Imagine a perfect school in which the material is taught gradually and allows students to practice and see the results of what they've learned immediately. In this school, a student is sitting in class with a sense of complete control over the material. The previous stage is perfectly clear, the student knows he has perfect control over it since he succeeded at a task practicing that knowledge; he is awaiting the next bit of information because he is eager to add it to his growing stack of skills.

What is this school? It is the learning process as designed in every video game with multiple layers of skill.
But if such a school existed in real professions (to the degree it is possible): it would have produced the exact feeling of playing a game: a feeling of confidence and accomplishment.

In short: Work involves long-term (rewards and training) and games are short-term. The disadvantage is the need of persistence and patience, but the advantage is that a career provides a lifetime of accomplishments.
Work can provide a deeper, stronger sense of accomplishment than a game.
Being a great surgeon is more satisfying than being great at Packman, for example, because the skill encompasses the surgeon's intelligence more fully, thus providing a deeper sense of efficacy and self-esteem.
In a game one's rewards have meaning only in the context of the game. In real life one can take pride in knowing that one's accomplishments support one's actual life. The wealth and services one produces have meaning in the real world, not in an imaginary one.

It is this last fact that makes work an irreplaceable psychological value (irreplaceable by games). Self esteem in essence is the recognition that one is fit to live, to succeed in supporting one's life. A game can only simulate that in an imaginary world: But to have that recognition, productive work is the only option of getting and maintaining self-esteem.
Games are a more limited environment than reality is. A game has a plan for the player, in reality one makes one's own plan. It requires that one takes the driver's seat, not the passenger's seat (while in a game it is somewhere in between).
Other differences are that games have an additional artistic element and personalization element.

Games are an end in themselves: People don't play a game to make a living, but for the fun of playing it. The conclusion is; that if people could experience work as they experience a game (as something that gives them that uplifting feeling of efficacy), they would work not just to support their life, but for the psychological value of self esteem.

This is how work should ideally be experienced: As means for that uplifting feeling of self-esteem. Productive work is the only way to achieve that value, to fulfill that inherit psychological need.
To accomplish that, a career needs to be chosen like a game is designed: To match one's abilities and potential, to allow progress in one's chosen field within relatively short amount of time, all the time. A career, like a game, must always grow and develop. Stagnating on one level of skill with no challenges cannot provide a sense of efficacy.

Rewards and success are fuel for action: both in games and in work.

Unlike a game, a career has long-term goals and long-term rewards. It therefore requires reminding oneself, during periods of effort without reward, that the reward is attainable further in the future. In other words: being persistent.

Moving from games to an actual career involves mastering two things: 1. Long-term vision and 2. Independent decision making.

Games cannot replace the role a job has in sustaining man's self-esteem, but they are a great way to experience a world in which progress is easy and fast, rewards can be attained immediately and one's achievement are quickly stacking up.

If you ever excelled at a game, it is a good feeling to remember - so you can aim at getting that same feeling from a career of your choosing.

What is ethics and why do we need it?

2009-10-31T01:04:00.000-07:00

We make decisions every day, all the time.

What do you think is the fundamental reason for our need to act, to make decisions?

One thing to notice is that our feelings and sensations depend on our choices. Certain things will make us happy, certain things will make us miserable.

Losing a house, a great job, a tooth, or a girlfriend can make one miserable. And yet the possession of these things is not automatic: it depends on the choices one makes every day.

So why do we need to make decisions? Because if we don't, we loose the things we enjoy, or don't gain them in the first place. And if taken to the extreme: Lack of action, lack of decisions - leads to death.

This much is available to every person: Just look at the decisions you've made today and notice that each one of them ultimately influences your feelings, sensation or well being.

Let's throw in a few examples:

Getting out of bed to go to work: Why make such a decision? Maybe because you love your job and you can't wait to get there. Maybe because if you don't, you don't have money, which means you can't pay rent, which means you live in the street in the rain and suffer.
Brushing teeth: Because it influences the sensation in your mouth and in the long run your ability to chew with your own teeth.
Turning on the T.V. : The enjoyment of watching entertaining things.

If you don't get out of bed, brush your teeth, turn on the T.V the default is death and suffering.

On the other hand if you make the right decisions the result is happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, health.

In other words we need to make decisions because fundamentally action is required to achieve happiness and to remain alive.

Every human being that ever existed needed some sort of guidance how to live, what to avoid, what to seek, how to get it.

We need that guidance not only in isolated cases, but in the most fundamental questions in our lives: What kind of person do I want to be? What lifestyle do I want? What purpose or goals should I seek?

Ethics is the branch of philosophy which answers that need. Ethics is known to most people as a list of "you shall"s and "you shall not"s. Or - "this is good" and "this is bad". The bible provides such guidelines or suggestions, such as "you shall not steal/ kill/ cheat...".

Some people think, therefore, that ethics is an arbitrary social invention, intended to bind some to the will of others.

Ethics is indeed a guide to life, a "shall and shall not's"- except, it assumes a standard. What is good and what is bad makes no sense apart from someone for which it is good or bad for, and a goal by which to measure "good" or "bad".

If you want to build a house, you should take certain actions and should not take others. Some actions are good and some are bad for your goal. The same is true for the ultimate goal - our own life and the enjoyment of it.

Notice that once the need has been identified - Ethics becomes a scientific matter. It requires a careful study of generations of human beings - the behaviors that promote their well being and the behaviors that inhibit or destroy it. It is a study that must identify our nature and needs, and provide principles accordingly.

Ethics is not empirical - just as building a table is not empirical. One indeed makes several trials building a table - but over the trials one discovers the proper principles of building it.

Similarly, ethics is not about measuring the gross domestic product of a society and recording the behavior of the majority of people living in it. It involves identification of the principles of behavior that lead to the success of an individual and a society. These principles are timeless, they always "work" given their context (that life, choice and happiness are possible).

Let's summarize: The need for ethics comes from the fact that we need to make decisions, and that our decisions influence our sensations, feelings and survival. If we wish to live, we need to act. Ethics therefore is a science that identifies the principles that best serve this goal.

Let's look at some examples. What method is best to make decisions? Is it our emotions, or our reasoning mind? Do we need to seek the truth, or is it best to indulge in self-illusions? These are fundamental questions and as such belong to the field of ethics.

Ethics does not prescribe every single decision one makes. It does not prescribe the method to brush one's teeth - but it will tell you that your health is a value that needs to be maintained. The details are up to a more specialized or specific study. Ethics won't tell you how to play chess - it will only evaluate the value of thought provoking games for you, and their role in life.

Ever had to decide between preparing for an important exam and going out for a movie? To make this decision, one must turn to basic principles: Do I decide by what provokes the strongest emotion or by reason? Do I decide by what I know is good for the long run? Should I even be doing something which is unpleasant for me at all? "live like there is no tomorrow" is a philosophical, ethical guideline (good or bad). One needs ethics whether one wants it or not, so long as one chooses to live.

Why choose to live? Because this is the only way for us to experience any pleasure. Pleasure is what we are driven by, by our nature. This is why suicide is only committed by depressed individuals, and not as a matter of a meaningless arbitrary choice. We all know that by living we can have everything, and in death there is nothing at all.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize one more aspect of ethics: Ethics is primarily a guide for an individual - not a society. It does have implications for life in society, if one chooses to have that, but it is primarily a personal guide.

If you now understand what ethics is and why we need it, the big question remaining is: what are those scientific ethical principles?

I found the answer in Ayn Rand's writing (which I cannot recommend enough) and in large this is the question I dedicate my blog to.

Leadership & Values: a lecture by John A. Allison

2009-10-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

A great lecture by John A. Allison, CEO of BB&T corporation bank, about the significance and practicality of morality in life.

The significance of acting by a moral code explained by a man who has a long experience managing a big company and seeing people act everyday in ways either leading to their success or their failure.

(Note: Audio quality improves after a minute and a half of the video, about the time where John Alison is introduced to the stage).

[Watch the lecture on Youtube].

Faulty common beliefs

2009-09-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

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.

"Community service" and help in good will

2009-09-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, September 11th, Obama made a speech to the nation claiming the significance and meaning of the day is "community service".

Take a moment to ponder: what exactly is the meaning of "community service", and is it really the reason so many American citizens helped others during the event 8 years ago?

To "serve" means "work for or be a servant to", "do duty", "devote (part of) one's life or efforts to" another person.

Is this what was the help about? Were those who helped saw themselves as servants of the ones under the ruins? Did they see it as their duty to selflessly serve the men in need?

I don't think so. Those people were proud, not humble. They saw themselves as soldiers, not as servants.

"Community service" and what was going on there that day and in the days that followed were complete opposites.

Those people who helped others did not do so because they thought their duty is to sacrifice their lives so that others may live. I believe they did not do it out of moral duty, but out of a spiritual, selfish reason - they valued the lives of the kind of people under the ruins, who shared their values and the American love of freedom.

They were angry at the terrorist attack which stood directly against what America is stands for, and by helping others they were fighting for and reaffirming their own spiritual values.

This was not service to the state or the "community". It was devotion to their own ideals and values.

This is a very important distinction to understand: If someone is doing something for someone else, it could have two opposite meanings. The "Stalin" meaning of "you are not important, live for the greater good", and the American generosity.

If both are "doing something for someone else", what is the distinction between the two?

It is this distinction that Obama wants people to lose. He wants to take the second meaning of genuine generosity and replace it with the "Stalin" meaning of "live for others".

He wants to scare people that if they don't agree to his idea of "community service" that they are not generous, when in fact generosity and "community service" are complete opposite.

Generosity is an extension of one's spiritual values toward another human being who shares them. It is those spiritual values that allow a man to truly value human life, and thus see them as worthy to preserve.

The man whose sole value is to sacrifice his life for the "community" is incapable of valuing human life.

When I help someone, I do so because their own well being is a selfish value to me. I do so because I see in them the spiritual values I respect and have in me: integrity, courage, determination, honesty.

Does Stalin ever helped anyone? He talked a lot about "service of the greater good", "service to other men", "service to the state" - Did he ever help another soul?

His kind is a void. He has no spiritual values. Human life means nothing to him. This, is the meaning of true selflessness, of "community service", of living for someone else.

Yes, the help is extended to someone else, but the reason is not selfless service, but pride, justice and profound individuality.

Keep in mind this important distinction: Selfless service or selfish generosity? The two could not be further apart.

Common sense in Ethics

2009-08-04T00:47:00.000-07:00

What makes "common sense" ideas in ethics common sense? Consider the following examples:

Example: Owner of a Pizza place, advertising his store with the following message: "Big chain of Pizzerias cannot produce the same quality of food as our small cozy store. come taste the difference".
Then, after a few years he becomes so successful that he opens up a chain of Pizzerias. If he were to advertise it as "Best Pizza ever, we treat every pizza as if it came from our personal home oven" he would be regarded as a phony by people, because he previously claimed it is impossible to produce high quality food in mass production.

Why would he be regarded as a phony? Because people realize in a common sense way, that if a principle is true a certain point in time, it should also be true for a later point in time. [An abstraction is true regardless of time]

An example showing another aspect: A principle in ethics cannot be true for one man but not for another - it is true as an abstraction for every man. Every kid knows that if it is wrong for others to cheat in a game, it is wrong to cheat in a game, period. For others and for himself. Or if one kid accuses another kid for doing X (like talking during an important class), then it would be hypocritical for the blamer to do X and at the same time preach to someone else that doing X is wrong. A typical response a kid would give to such accusation under the circumstances is: "But you do it too!"

The two examples show that it is common sense that an evaluation of an action (as good or bad, just or unjust) cannot be isolated to a single instance - it must be a principle.

What makes it "common sense"?

To understand it, let's look at how human cognition works in regards to inanimate objects. If one object falls down when you release it from a height, and this happens with every object, then one concludes that objects fall down when released from a height. People would consider a lunatic a person who would go "this objects fall" "and this object falls" "and this object falls" "But what happens with this object? I don't know". In other words, our cognition functions seeking abstractions, generalizations, principles. This is how even the least intelligent (yet still rational) man thinks. Even if all he knows is how to grow oranges, he would still know that all orange trees needs water to grow, that this is the nature of an orange tree as a principle.

Deciding on shoulds, on right and wrongs in human behavior, is different than learning that objects fall and more complicated, but nonetheless, it remains the same that if a principle applies to one man, it applies to all men. If it is bad to murder, then it is bad to murder for everyone at every time. What makes this common sense, something that every kid understands, is the fact that our consciousness functions as an abstracting mechanism - this is the way we comprehend reality.

Therefore a thieve cannot feel guiltless and still hold that if someone steals his property he's bad. In the back of his mind he knows and feels that if he condemns someone for doing X, then he is bad as well for doing it. A thief therefore has to develop a different view of ethics that would make stealing alright. For example "it's a dog eat dog world. One must steal and kill to survive, it's just a question of who does it better". Such a view makes a justification as a principle for stealing. [as a side note, notice the destructive role this conclusion plays in his life. He will regard thieves as virtuous and seek their company, even though they are the most untrustworthy people out there, he will not have the moral ammunition to blame someone for stealing from him. He basically strips himself off a central principle for survival]

He may try to say that other people are bad if they steal from him, yet he is not bad for stealing from others - but then he would go against the very essence of his thinking, of how his mind grasps everything in the world. If X is wrong for men but not for him, even though he's a man, then generalizations as such cannot be trusted. If it is good for others to be happy, why would this mean that it is good for him as well? If a certain medicine is good to cure something for all men, who is to say that it is good for him as well? If it is wrong to grow orange trees without water, who is to say that this applies to any particular orange tree? He says in essence that generalizations about human nature and human behavior are illegitimate. But he cannot escape the fact that his consciousness acts seeking unity of his knowledge. If generaliazing about stealing is wrong, then generalizing as such should be doubted in other cases as well.

He will no longer be able to say with conviction "well of course it's good for people to be happy, that is human nature". And since he rejects his ability to form principles in ethics, he is left helpless to survive. He can no longer hope to find a reliable guide for action. How could he? What's good for humanity, what man should do to live a good life can no longer logically apply to him as well.

I think most people struggle to explain why things like murder, theft, dishonesty, etc' are bad on principle. The difficulty here is to comprehend that principles are equally valid to human actions as they are for the behavior of any other object or phenomenon.

Conclusion from all the above: Moral people are those who stay loyal to the understanding that a principle of human action is a principle. In other words, practice what you preach.

They may not know why this is right, they may only experience it as a strong emotional conviction, but the fact remains that they stay loyal to the proper method of making conclusions. And the strength of the conviction comes from the fact that they realize that if they desert this method of thinking about ethics, they desert their method of thinking about everything.

Seemingly, the man who acts regardless of a principle because he cannot think of a rational explanation why it should be otherwise is the one acting on reason, not on emotions. But this is not true.

He acts regardless of his implicit knowledge, which he did not insist on understanding. It would be the equivalent of dismissing the feeling of strong conviction that orange trees need water to grow because he is not yet sure what is the source of the feeling.

By far, the more difficult thing to grasp in ethics is why things like stealing, killing, etc' are experienced as bad as common sense. Why these things and not others?

The common sense behind that is that without those things life is not possible. If life is not possible, game over, there is nothing more to talk about.

If someone came to you and said "Why do you need your house? this is nonsense, I'm taking it away from you", you'd smack the bastard on the head. It would be clear to you that you need your house to survive, and that something that goes against your survival is bad. "Why do you need to be alive? What do you care if I cut your throat?" Such a question would be a sign of lunacy. It is clear to one that living is important, it is important, because without that there is nothing else to experience or regard as important.

So in these extreme cases which are easily observable to one, like a fist quickly approaching one's face, one understands implicitly that life is the standard of value - of regarding something as good or bad.

The difficulty is in generalizing cases like that to the rest of one's life. Something like lack of a law against stealing seems much further away and less tangible than a knife in proximity to one's throat.

This is why, in my opinion, people have a problem explaining why stealing and killing are wrong, even though they are experienced as a common sense thing.

A: "Why do we need laws against stealing and killing?"

B: "Because that is the only way we can survive as a society"

A: "And why is that significant in any way?"

B: "Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't be standing here, punk."

The last answer of B is the recognition that life is an ultimate value, one that makes all others possible. A question "why is living of any importance?" bypasses the fact that anything that is important is within one's life. No life, nothing to regard as important or non-important. It's like asking "why are questions important?" bypassing the fact that the questioner is asking a question.

Values as objective

2009-06-24T14:25:00.001-07:00

What makes something good? Is it how you feel about it, how the universe "built" it, or how something in the universe relates to you?

These are 3 different philosophical approaches to "the good", which are Intrinsic, Subjective and Objective:

Intrinsic: "Eating a banana is good because food is good"
Subjective: "Eating this banana is good because I feel like it"
Objective: "Eating this banana is good for me because it gives me energy, health and enjoyment"
Intrinsic: "Religion is good because that's the nature of reality as dictated to us by god"
Subjective: "Religion is good because I feel good whenever I read the bible"
Objective: "Religion contradicts reason, which is requires for my survival, therefore it's bad"

A description of the three approaches by Ayn Rand, from "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (in blue):

"There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective.
The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of “good” from beneficiaries, and the concept of “value” from valuer and purpose—claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself."

"Intrinsic value" is the approach of the man that says that what makes something good is how the universe "built" it.

Examples of an intrinsic approach to values:

"The elimination of the human genes in the process of evolution is good because this is the nature of the universe, or the will of the universe, if you will"
"The existence of living things is good" (This implies that something can be good regardless of someone for which it would be good)
"Having sex before marriage is bad" ("Why? Because god said so" - or "it simply IS")
"Cutting down plants is bad because it hurts mother earth"

The Subjective approach:

"The subjectivist theory holds that the good bears no relation to the facts of reality, that it is the product of a man’s consciousness, created by his feelings, desires, “intuitions,” or whims, and that it is merely an “arbitrary postulate” or an “emotional commitment.”

The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness; the subjectivist theory holds that the good resides in man’s consciousness, independent of reality."

Subjective approach examples:

"Religion is good because whatever makes the person happy is good for him"
"What I see as good is not the same as what you see as good, therefore, there is no real concept of "good" or "bad"; In your worldview, a killer is bad, but in his worldview, he is not."
"Nobody really knows what is good or bad for anyone - it's a matter of individual feeling."
"I am good because I am me, and every person thinks of himself as good." (implies that a person is good because he wants to be good, not because he has some criterion to judge himself by)

"The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man."

Objective approach examples:

"This medicine is vluable to me because it will cure my illness"
"I value independent thinking because it allows me to create material good necessary for my life"
"Listening to this kind of music is good for me because it uplifts my spirit and inspires me to acquire the success I dream of having"
"Listening to this kind of music is bad for me because it drives me further into despair, despite the fact it provides temporary emotional relief" (a dis-value)
"This woman is no good for me because she is a liar and a cheat who will end up hurting me" (again a dis-value)

Notice that in each case a fact of reality is identified, which is relevant to the person's well being - not just his momentary feeling, but that which allows good feelings in general. He holds his own life (not someone else's) as the standard to judge what is good and bad for him, and ultimately it his his choice and understanding that makes something a value to him.

In summary:

If the intrinsicist followed his idea of the good to the fullest, he'd be like a robot acting to satisfy the universe or "god" or some unquestioned moral code. In one example, he'd be trying to eliminate himself in favor of the next step in evolution, or in favor of preservation of "mother earth".

If the subjectivist would follow his ideas to the fullest, he'd be looking only at his inner state to decide what is good for him - never at reality. If he craves food he'd be fat, and if he's fat, then he'll say that being fat is good, because he decides what is good.

Only the objectivist (denoting here: a man who uses the objective approach to values) lives with his eyes open, considering both the facts of reality, how they relate to his well being and to the satisfaction of his spiritual needs.

What makes something good for someone is not just how it makes him feel, nor how the universe is built - but his own identification that the thing promotes his physical and spiritual well being.

Like the subjectivist - he strive to enjoy things - to give his emotions satisfaction and achieve pleasure. But unlike the subjectivist he uses reason to identify how to achieve enjoyment, not mere emotions.

Like the instrincisist he strives to follow a moral code - but unlike the intrinsicist he does not take a moral code from "the universe", from god or from society as a given - he develops his own moral code by discovering the principles necessary for his life and happiness.

Personal experience, books and other people can be of great aid in this process, but essentially the process is done with his own judgement.

Under this process the values he chooses are objective: They are his choice, but not an arbitrary one: They are a result of correct identification of the facts of reality in relation to him.

Values without a valuer

2009-06-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

What is "important" in life? A commonly accepted answer is: Getting your name down in history books, bringing progress to humanity, helping people, changing things on a major scale.
Then, there is a sub-version of what is "important": the idea of what is "successful". "Successful" means being famous, having a triple degree in something, rich, popular, good looking.

Even though this concept of "important" refers to an individual, and what an individual should do - What it fails to consider is the actual individual. It prescribes what is "important" to an individual while making irrelevant the actual opinion of an individual person.

Ethics taken as duty are experienced as an end in themselves: A person is honest for the sake of being good, he does well in school for the sake of being good, he goes on a diet for the sake of being "successful" etc'.

Philosophically he views morality as duty: as a set of rights and wrongs dictated to him from something outside himself (like society or god).

Psychologically this view of morality puts a wedge between his self esteem and desires; because he needs to choose if he wants to be good and obedient, or pursue his own desires and goals and give up being good (which means to give up self-esteem).

Philosophically, a proper moral code depends on man's choice to live and achieve his needs. It's opposite, a moral code prescribed as duty, makes personal goals and thinking irrelevant, and is therefore improper as a guide to life (which is what ethics in essence IS).

Psychologically, the distinction between morality from choice or from duty is not between following good morality or bad morality - rather the method by which a man accepts his moral code and why he accepts it.
Does he choose his moral code to better his life, or does he accept it unquestionably, as something above himself to live up to?
If a man sees morality as "the good" (i.e. "this is what I should do to be good!") and not as "the good for me" ("I should do X if I want good things for myself") then he accepts morality as a matter of duty, regardless of how good the moral code is philosophically.

The person with the first approach ("be good!") has no explanation of why these things are important. It seems to him like there is no explanation - those things simply ARE important, even though he never reached this conclusion himself nor recall ever choosing those things. His concept of "important" is divorced from his desires and ideas.

For many it can be difficult to grasp that a proper moral code actually depends on their choice; Many of us are educated to accept what is "good" or "bad" as irrelevant to our choice and beyond our reasoning.
Kids are taught what is "important", such as; it is important to get good grades, important to keep a safe, traditional path vs. pursuing a "hopeless" dream, important to have friends, not to upset anyone, to "get along". It is important to do "great things", to have money, important to share, important to be modest, nice, etc'. All this is demanded from a child as measurement of how good he is, without providing an explanation what makes these things good for the child. Without giving him incentive or reason to choose this course of behavior himself. [Additional note at the end regarding this point]

This sort of "education" sets the psychological state of mind for having values without a valuer. To pursue "important" things that one does not enjoy and that are not part of individual self-fulfillment, rather they stand above one's self, as a test of his worth.

What kind of psychology leads a man in one direction or the other? I find that the answer lies in the trait of selfishness.

A selfish person is primarily motivated to achieve his own enjoyment. And unless some enjoyment logically follows in exchange for the effort of acting - he does not move an inch. When there is something he values - he does not give it up.
A non-selfish person gives up his pleasure and his values easily if he is taught that the good is to do so. He does not act to achieve pleasure - rather he acts in a "moral" way for the sake of not disappointing himself - for the fear of being bad or the attempt to be good, without any further purpose - without attempting to gain something of personal importance to him, something he enjoys.

For example: Suppose someone enjoys romantic relationships. And some day he learns that according to an accepted ethical principle, this kind of behavior is bad. If he is selfish he will say: "To hell with this principle, it's taking away my enjoyment. Unless I understand in what way this principle is good for my life, I say to hell with it".
The person who sees morality as duty, however, will think: "Well, to be good I must give up my pleasure from dating. Being good is more important than my pleasure".

In what way, then, can morality be selfishly chosen?

As we grow up we learn that a certain course of action is required to achieve the things we aim at getting. We look for some guidance for the kind of person we want to be in order to deal with the difficulties in our lives and enjoy it, we look for some ideal or role model for guidance of the kind of person we want to be. Most people do not realize that this is their first step to choose a moral code - and not what they were taught to believe is "the good".

The correct method to choose a moral code is highly personal: It is acting as the kind of person you are inspired to be, for the sake of achieving things you enjoy. And the process of integrating a chosen moral code to one's life goes through one's ability to understand it.

Most of us get educated with one bad idea or another. It is therefore important to make sure what we consider as important actually serves our enjoyment and well being.

If there is one advice I could offer someone who wants to get rid of morality from duty it would be - focus on your pleasure, use the fullest capacity of your reasoning mind to maximize your enjoyment through the whole of your life. Learn to notice what you enjoy and what you drag yourself through in order to be "good".
One cannot chose a career or personality that are good for him and yet make him self-alienated and bored.

The purpose of morality compatible with human life is to provide us the principles to guide our lives: to teach us the kind of person we need to be in order to enjoy our lives and sustain them.

Don't give up your life for any purpose less than that.

[Note: to some degree, a child always acts without fully understanding the benefit of some behavior to his life. It is the role of his parents to teach him to act in a certain way. But the right way to motivate him to do it, while he learns the importance of that behavior for himself, is to give (or take) values, and not by presenting the rule as a gauge of his worth.
For example: You can motivate a child to learn to read by promising a prize. But a bad way to motivate him would be to present the activity as an end in itself: in the form of "if you learn how to read you are good and I will love you, and if you do not you are bad and I will not hug you", which teaches him that "good" and "bad" are impersonal concepts.]

The Role of Emotions in life

2009-04-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

Positive emotions are the reward for living.
Emotions motivate us to act to gain or keep values.
Emotions are a mechanism whose goal is to safeguard our life.
Emotions are crucial cognitive aids.

First and foremost: Emotions, positive emotions - are the reward for living. They are the reward for every action, every effort we put in to achieve something.
Falling in love, enjoying some activity, person or object, Feeling relaxed, joyous, entertained and the rest of the pleasant emotions are the reward for living - they are what make life worth maintaining. Psychologically - there is no escape from the fact that enjoyment is the fuel life requires. The only purpose of life compatible with the human nature is happiness.
To quote Ayn Rand: "It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it."
Emotions are motivators for action. Pleasure motivates us to gain values and unpleasant emotions motivates us to protect values from danger. Without emotions we would not even care if a danger was staring us in the face. Without holding in mind the enjoyment promised by having money, or the fear of being homeless - there would be no motivation to work.
Emotions are mechanisms aimed at helping our survival (helping to achieve and keep values).

"In psychological terms, the issue of man’s survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of “life or death,” but as an issue of “happiness or suffering.” Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death." (Ayn Rand, The virtue of selfishness)

Emotional pain (such as sorrow, fear, anger) by its nature, indicates a danger to a value; such as fear of losing our wallet or anger at having a piece of property taken away from us.
Because emotional pain is experienced as unpleasant it motivates us to avoid that feeling, which in action is achieved by protecting our values and trying to regain what is lost or threatened.
Emotional pleasure is a result of achieving a value; such as enjoying a stack of money, a comedy act or Relaxing at the safety of your home.
Since these emotions are experienced as pleasurable, we are motivated to achieve them by achieving values: Earning money, going to see a comedy act or building a home.
Happiness results from achieving values, and therefore indicates a successful state of being - a success in living.

Overall emotions as a mechanism safeguard our values. Values are things which our life require - and therefore emotions safeguard our lives.

[One important note to add here is that values still need to be chosen by every person. Wanting a house or money is not automatic. But once a person chooses to live, these other values are what is required to sustain that choice. If a person thinks correctly he will end up holding these things as values].
Emotions are cognitive aids in several ways:
- They provide a quick summary of your subconscious evaluation of something based on vast amount of knowledge. Emotions are experienced as an emotion, but what the feeling is based on is some intellectual calculation. For example: when you feel fear at reading a piece of news that may affect your stock value negatively, Like a person for holding certain fundamental ideas you agree with, or enjoy a new cellphone.
  In all these cases there is a lot of knowledge that you are not directly aware of when you experience the emotion which is involved in generating the emotion.
  In the first example I gave: you subconsciously understand how the piece of news will affect your stock value, how much money you put into that stock, other assets in your life that may be in danger if you loose a certain amount of money, or the threat to your dream vacation you were planing to pay for with the money. The threat to these values is what triggers the fear - even though you are only directly aware of the newspaper article (at least at the first moment of grasping the issue).
  Unlike reason - which is a more precise tool, but is much slower than emotions, which are lightning quick calculations of how something relates to you, based on all of your knowledge.
  Because of that they provide very important input for you to consider and can help make a thinking process faster and based on more of your knowledge.
- Certain class of emotions are devoted to the value of knowledge, and they help our thinking by providing feedback about our process of conscious thinking. This class includes: Confusion, clarity, unclarity, certainty, doubt, surprise, suspicion, boredom, curiosity.
  To see the significance of these emotions to your thinking, try to imagine how the process of learning a new subject would go if you didn't have the emotions of confusion or unclarity. You would not know when to ask questions because nothing would indicate to you the need to ask, because you would never feel that something is unclear or confusing. Furthermore, the motivation to avoid an intellectual state of confusion will be gone. Confusion is an unpleasant emotion which motivates us to straighten out the facts so that we are clear on a subject.
- Emotions help keep concepts concretized (This idea is taken from Leonard Peikoff's audio course "Understanding Objectivism" ). A concept like "life" or "rights" when accompanied by the right emotions helps keep in mind what these words mean in reality: "life" is not merely a definition of biological function, but it means your life, the existence of people you love, the difference between the fun you had with a pet when it was alive vs. lack of it after it is gone. "Life" then means something real. Similarly "justice" means the difference between wasting one's life in jail because of injustice and not merely a dictionary definition. One can stay indifferent about a dry intellectual definition of the word justice, but one cannot stay indifferent about spending time in jail while being innocent.
  A great example of that would be something I heard in sociology class long time ago: After extensive research, two sociology researchers found that a clear connection exists between feelings of distress and suicide.
  For a normal person, the idea of suicide is concretized by an understanding of the negative emotions involved. Nobody thinks that a man takes his life without feeling some emotional distress. But for the researchers, it was a purely statistical intellectual matter - which is why they saw the need to conduct a research for what every idiot on the street could tell them right away.

This has been a rather condense discussion of the role of emotions in life because it was connecting the topic of emotions to many different subjects.
I'd appreciate your feedback if something was left unclear and whether or not it was too condense to keep all the conclusions in mind.

Selfishness in relationships

2009-04-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

It is a common view that the interests of two people involved in a relationship collide. To take a romantic relationship as the leading example: She likes Ballet, he likes baseball, nobody likes to do the dishes - therefore many times, one has to sacrifice and suffer while the other enjoys. The relationship, therefore, by this view, necessarily has internal battles, and selfishness is a threat to the relationship - something that pulls away from the "together" and builds a wall.

The exact opposite is true, when "selfishness" is understood correctly.

To explain what I mean, let's take the common notion of "selfishness" to its extreme: The ultimate selfish person would be the one who could make his girlfriend into a slave. She will cook for him, massage his feet, clean his apartment, and if needed, open beer bottles for him with her teeth.
Most people will not dispute that this is the ultimate selfish person - concerned with nothing but his own “ass”. The other end of this idea of "selfishness" is the sucker - the woman from this example, who never gets what she wants and is always busy pleasing her man.
One thing that’s obvious about this allegedly selfish person is that he acts to satisfy his immediate needs. But this is not the essence of selfishness.

To explain why, let's consider a whole different type of a relationship: a relationship where each one enjoys making the other person happy and cares about their partner's well being.
In action, this means occasionally spending hard-earned money buying presents for the partner, giving them massage when they're tired, making food for them when the time and mood is right and giving them support and encouragement in their career.

Are they "suckers" or "selfless" for doing such things for their partner? Similarly, is a mother taking care of her kids, paying for their college, instead of training them to be house slaves - a sucker, who is not concerned with her own well being?

It is precisely their happiness and well being that the person from my example (and the mother) is motivated by, while the so called "egoist" I first discussed is not concerned with happiness at all - especially not in the context of the relationship. One cannot seek happiness in a relationship with someone one tries to enslave. And a person who prefers a beer over a happy relationship with his girlfriend (or boyfriend) is not concerned with his enjoyment. He does act to satisfy his immediate wants, but he does not seek the best possible for himself in life.
The person who seeks the best for himself, tries to find ways to get out of a swamp – instead of occasionally scratching his bottoms when the swamp water irritate it. He does not adjust or accept the swampy in his life – he acts to change it.

Investing in those one loves gives tremendous value. It is ultimately one's “ass” that one looks after when investing effort in supporting a loved one. The smile on their face gives pleasure, their good mood is fun to be around and their psychological and physical well being is required to enjoy their company.

The other type, who cares best for his beer (to choose a random example) is looking, at best, for some sort of comfort from how much his life suck, but it is not enjoyment or happiness that he seeks in the relationship.

To use an example to make this even clearer: If a person grows a plant, and spends time nurturing it – is he a selfless sucker, or is he acting selfishly? After all, he is working for the benefit of the plant. Wouldn’t he be selfish to say “the hell with it, I’m not going to enslave myself for the good of a plant”?
It is easy to see that this thinking is ridiculous – a person nurturing a plant is doing it to enjoy it (for the fruit or the aesthetic value). The fact that it benefits the plant is irrelevant.
Same thing is true if you replace the plant with a human being.

Investing in your partner is ultimately investing in your own happiness. It is part of acting to make your life happy – and because of that it is selfish.

Does this mean that meeting your partner's every requirement is always centered around one's well being? No. Investing in someone else as means to one's own enjoyment depends on one's mood, tasks for the day, personal interests, etc'.

For example, if you are so bored with ballet, that if you go with your girlfriend to see it, even though her mood might be good afterwards, yours will be so low, you won't be able to enjoy her company at all - obviously in this situation it is not selfish to go see the ballet show with her. But, to give another example: if your time is free, you don't mind or like cooking, and your partner comes home exhausted and hungry - it increases your enjoyment to cook something for them and it is therefore selfish.
About doing the dishes – assume two people living together, both equally busy, both finding the task annoying. Is it selfish to try to make the other person do it? Essentially, is it selfish to act unjustly to your partner to get away with doing dishes?
It is not selfish for a few reasons: One is that you will be damaging your relationship – nobody likes to be treated like a slave – it is a certain romance killer. To prefer avoiding dishes over a happy relationship is not pursuing happiness, but the opposite. And the second reason is that being just to other people is a requirement of self-esteem (but I won’t get into it now). It is in both the partner’s interest to reach some just agreement to handle dishes in this case. Their interests do not collide when both of them have their best self-interest in mind.

To further expand this understanding, consider the case of a battlefield: Is it selfish to stay in your hole, never sticking your neck out to shoot an enemy or help your fellow soldiers? No, it's stupid. Your fellow soldiers alive and well means more firepower. Cooperating with your fellow soldiers (such as providing backup) means you act in the most efficient way to defeat the enemy thus securing your own survival. The guy sitting in his hole doing nothing is escaping the reality of the situation - not acting to support his life.
What will he do once all his other teammates are dead? His death will follow too. Cooperation with his team is required for his survival.

Does this mean you should do nothing but provide backup for your teammates? Obviously, this would be putting other people’s life above your own. The soldier in this situation has to primarily look out for his own well being, which in turn requires cooperation with the others, and helping them to the extent it serves one's cause (in this case, survival).

In summary – the selfish person seeks happiness in life – and nurturing a person he loves is an extension of that. Selfishness is therefore a requirement for a good relationship – not a wedge.
The interests of two such people in a relationship do not collide so long as they do not ignore reality.
And the common view of selfishness is completely wrong – reversing the meaning of self-interest by presenting laziness and exploitation as selfish behavior, when in fact just cooperation with people is selfish.

Thoughts about death and life

2009-04-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

Fear of death is a powerful and helpful motivator to take actions to keep us alive, such as treating a medical problem or fighting efficiently in a physical battle.

However, in this post I want to analyze the fear of death as an abstract idea (not as a fear of some immediate, concrete threat). Just the fear that someday you will die.

I'll start with some analysis of scary thoughts about death, and whether they are rightfully scary or not:

Dying as a painful experience and as "the end of me".
Death is just your consciousness ceasing to exist. When you die you do not experience "yourself" as not existing - you simply experience nothing.
Worst possible option is some pain before death, but it's not a big deal - it lasts a short while - no more big of a deal than the pain felt under injury or some disease after which you get better. Sure, it hurts, but we can all take some amount of pain (even if severe) bravely. So strike out pain as a big issue regarding death.
The disgusting idea of your body turning into a rotting corpse: Well, you're not there to witness that. The whole process takes place after you are no longer conscious. the disgusting physical aspect is only a problem for you regarding other people's death - but usually in today's society you can easily avoid the view of the dead body, let someone else take care of the funeral arrangements, and just keep in your mind the memory of the person as he was when he was alive - and this is what other people you know will experience in regard to you - so really us humans only experience one another in the nice clean form of moving, thinking, living people - and we have very little touch with the ugly side (except for undertakers). Seeing that this is the case, there is no point thinking of the ugly side, since you won't deal with it anyway - and just act like for you it doesn't exist (because it is actually true for your life - unless you're an undertaker/grave robber).
Fearing the thoughts before death - about whether or not your life has been good.
My answer to this is: Why fear that time? This will be a feeling that could last, say, I don't know, a few moments or a few days. You have numerous days to have all the other variety of feelings. It is senseless to spend all those days now preparing yourself for a single short moment in the future.

So given that these three options are struck out - what else is left to fear about death? All it is, is just your consciousness stopping, like what happens when you're under full anesthesia (or sleeping). Suppose you don't wake up from either one - no pain will be involved. There will simply be nothing but the cessation of life. Death is meaningless - it is simply the absence of everything. Life is what counts.
And when you realize that this is all death is - all that is left is to focus on living - on the enjoyment you can achieve while alive. Wasting time thinking of death is utterly useless (other than the time required to understand this fact) - all it accomplishes is wasting the time you do have on negative feelings. It will be the equivalent of going on vacation and spending all of it worrying and crying about the time when it will end.

Practical point to consider: what do you do if you DO have thoughts about death? Answer: you act to eliminate them by repeatedly reminding yourself the uselessness of thinking about it, followed by shifting your focus to something else. After enough time of repeating this your subconscious automatizes this correct approach and such thoughts don't appear anymore.

[As a general rule of maximizing the enjoyment from your life: Only allow negative emotions in your life to the extent they can be used to better your life (by motivating you or helping you to correct a problem) - but do not dwell on them when they arise from a situation you can do nothing about. ]

The only legitimate scary thought about death (which is actually a scary thought about life) is to live an unhappy life without the option of anything better in the future (since death eliminates the option of having a future).
So long as you are alive and think you will remain so for a long time, feeling bad can be tolerable, because you can always keep in mind that in the future more good things await. This is why in times of feeling bad thoughts of death become more scary - because death in this case means no hope for anything better. But if your life is good, and if you know you used your time in a satisfactory way - the end of the "vacation" is easier to accept.

What this scary thought of death comes down to - is fear of unexploited life, of life without the highest enjoyment you could achieve.

It all comes down to one conclusion: Live your life the best way you can to maximize your enjoyment, and stay focused on this goal.

How do we get acquainted with the concept of morality?

2009-04-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

We get acquainted with the idea in the form of a need for a role model as we grow up. We look at different characters around us and look for specific traits and principles of behavior that we admire, that make us feel uplifted, that give us a sense of self esteem and enjoyment in living.

Practically, emulating these traits leads to achievement and enjoyment of our values: of the things we pursue, enjoy and need: like friends, hobbies and other productive activities (like cleaning our room, or building airplane models, or painting).

Existentially, the purpose of morality and the reason men need it is because they need guidance how to live: How to survive, and how to achieve things that improve their lives.
However, a man growing up gets acquainted with the need of morality through a feeling of admiration for role models - more so than through the need for a specific course of action to achieve some value.

The reason is that someone else's personality concretizes for us the principles of behavior. It allows us to take a step back from some specific action, to look at the underlying principles that guide the hero's behavior. Like being tough and brave, direct, independent, powerful, etc', vs. telling the truth in some particular instance, or a one time instance of managing to overcome fear of spiders to whack one to a mush.

A nice example to illustrate this, is the T.V show Survivorman. Survivorman is, I am not ashamed to say - my hero. He goes out to the wild, for 7 days, with very little equipment - to survive on his own: on his wits and strength of character.

Nothing illustrates better than that the significance of the right personality (which means, the right morality) for a man's survival.
In nature, he faces so many difficulties, that if he did not have the right spirit - he would surely die.
He needs to cope with cold, rain and hunger, he needs to have the strength to go and look for food, and think how to build a shelter after 3 days of no eating. He needs to find the strength within him to continue thinking of ways to catch food or heal his worsening injury under exhaustion, and he needs to be optimistic that he can find his way out of a jungle after a night of sleeping on spiders, crawling scorpions and killer ants, after walking in the jungle for 2 days without water and thinking he may not find his way back in time. He needs to be able to enjoy the beauty of the jungle or play his harmonica to uplift his spirit when everything seems to be going bad.

What he needs is strength of character, optimism, rationality under pressure, being action-oriented and enjoyment-oriented and not trouble-oriented, determined, and brave.

He needs a moral ideal to literally survive, and he needs to be that ideal.

He needs certain personality traits (which are essentially principles of behavior, or virtues).

He needs something that takes all the specific actions required for survival in various situations, and abstract the underlying principles out of them.

When we grow up, this is what we respond to - the abstract principles embodied in the personality of our role model.
Even though we may not see the connection between that personality and the achievement of our values - the connection is there, existentially, and in our subconscious.

Ayn Rand's Philosophy - Objectivism

2009-04-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

In the head of the blog I describe my blog as having the philosophy of Objectivism as the background for my writing.

What is Objectivism?

In this video Ayn Rand explains parts of her philosophy and what philosophy is.

For a fuller presentation I recommend her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, her non-fiction book The Virtue of Selfishness and an online lecture by Leonard Peikoff presenting the basics of Objectivism (link).

Part 2 , Part 3

Understanding Objectivism can give your life tremendous value, with the ultimate goal of being happy.

Jealousy and Self-Esteem

2009-03-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Jealousy and Envy (quick dictionary definition): painful desire of another's advantages.

This feeling comes in 2 forms:

Jealousy is about losing a value to someone else (the context for jealousy is always social). It is a painful feeling regarding a value one has and is afraid of losing - or something a person has difficulty having, but see another enjoying.
Example: Seeing the object of your romantic interest showing affection to someone else.
Envy is about something one does not have, does not believe he can have,and yet see another person having and enjoying.

Example: A chronically fat woman envying a good looking woman for being thinner. (You know the saying, "don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful").

Jealousy, like other emotions, serves human survival. It is a negative emotion alerting a person in a painful way that his values are slipping away or that he is missing something crucial to him.
To illustrate: a child who feels unloved when his parents take away attention from him onto a new little brother, becomes jealous and upset. This shows in his behavior and alerts his parents that he needs more attention. Jealousy here serves to show that some value is in danger (in this case, it's the parent's affection).
While this is the normal function of jealousy (to protect life), it can arise as a result of some psychological problem or wrong standard of judging oneself.

By itself, jealousy is not related to self esteem. In other words the mere emotion of jealousy is not an indication of lack of self esteem. It depends what the subject of the jealousy is.

In some cases jealousy (or envy) is directed at another person's being, when the desired value in danger is one's own worth. Examples: Being jealous of someone because you consider them a better person morally, professionally, aesthetically, more popular, etc'.

To illustrate: suppose the person you're romantically interested in dates someone else - there are two types of jealousy possible here: One is being jealous for the woman - wanting the woman and being jealous that someone else has her. The other option is being jealous of the personality of the man who has her and seeing it as reproach for your personality not being good enough. The last type is much more severe and threatening.

The second type of jealousy in this example revolves around a self-doubt - a crack in one's self esteem.

In this case, a psychological problem (like a wrong premise) is involved and the actual threat indicated by jealousy is one's self-esteem.

How does this come to be? What makes some people satisfied with what they have, while others are jealous of someone's success?

It all starts with how a person learns to judge himself. Each person has some idea of his own worth in his eyes. Each person has a standard, or a set of ideas with which he judges himself.
Jealousy of the type associated to other people's success always involves an irrational standard for judging one's worth, and this can largely be based on how he was educated as a child - how his achievements and failures were treated by people the child looks up to for approval.
Consider the parents who make clear to their child, that to be loved and appreciated, he needs to get the best grades in the class, regardless of his actual ability. This places all the weight of his self worth on the actual concrete - the good grade - and not on his performance. If he did his best, and got an average grade - he is not worthy of a prize, but worthy of contempt or indifference. This kind of education makes self-esteem impossible. And worse, it places one's self esteem on a value that does not naturally arise from one's desires and interests. This child is taught that repression, self-beating and hard, joyless work are his main tools to become a worthy person. The feeling is of having something bigger than oneself, something from above, like a severe judge, that the person has to live up to to be worthy. "One day I will be happy, when I am thin". "One day, I'll be happy, when I am rich". And guess what? When they finally do get thin or rich, they are not happy. Because it has no personal value to them, it is a value gained only to "please the judge".

To give more examples of irrational standards: A standard for success is that one ought to succeed right away, purely from natural talent. Consider what it does to someone passionate about painting: He does not do as well as Michelangelo in his first attempt and then concludes he's no good and drops the whole thing. Or another example: Someone taking the action of productivity, divorced from his own desires and abilities, as part of his standard for judging people's worth (and his own worth). He immediately finds himself facing his own demand to start producing stuff in order to gain self-esteem. He becomes a slave to his own bad idea. A slave, because he makes himself work overtime without pay. "One day, when I am productive, I'll be happy".

A rational standard of judging oneself is based on evaluation of one's performance in relation to one's actual abilities. The last part is crucial. It sets the basis for rational self-esteem, which means, evaluation of one's worth rationally, by what is possible in reality, and not by a dream-goal which is unachievable to the individual.

[A side note: It is also important to choose the goals according to one's personal interests based on how a person feels about various things. A value should never be "something from above"].
From this it follows that a person should learn what are his abilities in those fields he wants to pursue (like sports, programming, painting, etc'). He does this by trying the best he can and observing the results and speed of progression in improving his skills in that field.

Once he has some idea what he can expect from himself, he judges himself by how well he did compared to his ability. This way, so long as the person does his best, he gains self esteem, even if others can do better than him.
In contrast, a person who judges himself only based on achievement of something or failing to achieve it, will always be on the lookout to see what others achieved. If they achieve better, he feels like they "steal" his self-esteem and feels hostility. This is because he places all the emphasis on the concrete. Admitting that he does not have what it takes to achieve that concrete is like death to his self-esteem. He must be all-powerful without limitations. So if someone else achieved it, but he did not, it shows that the concrete can be achieved, and therefore automatically it is a reminder of his personal failure, and a cause of jealousy. In fact, there may be no failure involved. It could be that this person did the best he could.

On the other side of the rope, telling a child that no matter what he does he is accepted and appreciated is bad too, since it encourages no effort from the child. The correct combination is judging one's success in achieving things but in relation to his abilities and limitations.
This creates an environment of self-acceptance and ambition combined (and I believe this is a rare combination nowadays).

This is a good place to remind that by itself, jealousy is not related to self esteem. The mere emotion of jealousy is not an indication of lack of self esteem.
It is only an irrational standard of judging one's worth that leads to the jealous type whose self-worth is threatened by other people's success. If one wishes to eliminate the jealousy - one needs to replace his incorrect standard.

What's inside women's mind?

2009-02-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

An entertaining story I saw in the T.V. series "Northern Exposure" reveals a funny psychological difference between men and women. The guy does his best to act "correctly" and ends up in complete bewilderment at the woman's behavior.

So here is the story:

There is a constant sexual tension between the doctor, Joel Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell, the pilot woman. Tension neither of them admits to the other, from fear of vulnerability, but which they are both aware of, without words.

So in this episode, they are forced to share a motel room, and end up kissing. They then agree to meet a few minutes later to continue it further. Only Maggie falls asleep, after 2 straight days of little sleep. after a few mild attempts Joel could not wake her up and so the whole thing stops there.
However, Maggie goes back home convinced they had sex. She tells him that the whole thing should not have happened, and asks to continue life as if it never occurred. But she still wants him, fantasizes about how it must have been, and feels very embarrassed around him.

When Joel find out that she thinks they had sex, he decides to do her a favor and end her embarrassment around him. He goes to her place and tells her that he did not have sex with her. She gets enraged, tells him he is a sadistic bastard and throws objects at him until he finally leaves, after nearly losing an eye.

Next day they meet, and she explains that if he wanted her enough he would have woken her up, or have sex anyway, while she was asleep. "Where is the passion Joel, where is the uncontrolled desire?" He replies that he was courteous by having self control. She replies with frustration "Is this what I inspire in you - self control?"

Joel is completely bewildered. He was certain he did what every woman would have respected him for.

If she wants him - why did she tell him to forget about ever having sex? And if she wants to forget all about it - why does she throw objects at him when he tells her it never happened?
And why does she throw him out of her house, if she actually wants him?

For a guy, this behavior would probably (I imagine) seem utterly bizarre, almost as if, a normal, rational human being is turned all of a sudden into a creature from another planet.

So what did Maggie O'Connell want?
A guy that will not act safe in pursuing her.

Someone who, despite any behavior from her side, will act to get what he wants.

If she sends mixed signals, he should rely on his intuition, he should know the truth in his heart, and pursue it.

If she creates a distance - he should break it.

If he is unsure about how she will respond to his pursuits - he should not care for such thing. He should love her so much, to put all his defenses down, and approach her with complete honesty about his desire and intention.

His best course of action would be to just find her and kiss her, no questions asked.

Should he be a mind reader? Not quite. What he needs to do is not doubt what he understands deep inside from the look in her eyes, or from times when she looks away.

If she is afraid of losing control - he should take advantage of it. He should make her lose control.

He should be brave - braver than she is. Thereby proving her that her admiration is justified.

Why does she put obstacles in his way if she wants him? Because she wants to be wanted in a certain way. She doesn't just want sex - she wants him to want it madly. She wants him to go after it, even in spite of a psychological obstacle of possible rejection. She tells him "let's forget it ever happened" - but what she wants is for him to tell her "no way". Agreeing to forget - is a choice to be safe, and a sign that safety is more appreciated than the enjoyment of having her.
Both of them do not admit their true feelings. But for anything to work, it has to be the guy to first break the ice. Why did she throw objects at him? Because him telling her they did not have sex was a sign that he did not want her enough - that he let his insecurity control his decision. It was easy to kiss her when he had clear evidence she wanted it. But to wake her up would require confidence in knowing that she wants him enough to want to be woken up. She needs him to have that confidence to be able to surrender to him.

So what is the missing element in men that exists in women's mind? It is the fact that they need to know their man can have control over them, and values them enough to put psychological "safety" aside. It's the fact that women want to be conquered that is unique to women, and men find hard to understand.

Positive vs. Negative motivation

2009-02-11T01:36:00.001-08:00

Overall, there are two kinds of emotional motivations: pleasant (will be referred to as "positive") and painful (will be referred to as "negative"). Either a man acts to gain pleasure, or to avoid pain. These are essentially the two forms of emotional motivation man experiences.

For example: we can be motivated to build a house out of a sense of pleasure. We can run away from a snake because of fear. We can give money to a beggar to avoid guilt, or we can buy a gift to a friend because of pleasure. We can study for a test because we are afraid to fail it, or we can read a book because we enjoy training ourselves in rational thinking.

These examples illustrate an additional implicit understanding - that emotions are motivational force for action.

The positive and the negative categories of emotional motivation are not meant to play an equal role in man's life.
Negative motivation is meant to help us avoid damage - to deal with disaster and prevent it. To that extent, it is an excellent servant, and useful for our lives.
Positive motivation is meant to motivate us for the rest of our actions in life, in the pursuit of values. Values such as food, house, entertainment, friends etc'.

Take this opportunity to stop and think for a moment: Is the pursuit of such values in your life a result of positive motivation or negative one? Are you moved in your work by a sense of pleasure, or by a sense of duty? Do you do what you think is moral out of duty, or out of pleasure?

Motivation in pursuit of values should be from positive emotions, not from negative ones.
Assuming that the pursuit of values is the norm of every day life (what we do most of the time), and disasters are exceptional and rare, motivation from negative emotions should only be present in exceptional cases of correcting a mistake, or when you try to deal with some disaster - but not on the form of daily basis.

It is important to keep in mind that negative emotions do have a significant role, too. Suppose you did something wrong, like, say, acting unjustly to a friend. You would feel guilt, and this will motivate you to correct the injustice. Acting on negative motivation in this case is proper.
How do you decide what is proper? Reason is always the final arbiter. But listening to your emotions is an important first step to suggest an action.

So let's look at an example of improper negative motivation: forcing oneself to do well at school, because of viewing it as an instance of the virtue of productivity. Doing well at school in most cases is NOT a matter of productivity at all (because school is not fully rational), studying becomes a constant action despite boredom and pain. "If you want to be good - you must try to be a good student. To be a good student - you must learn to endure pain".
The result is going through years of putting an effort into school because of a desire to avoid a sense of guilt and failure.
But the process of acquiring knowledge required for your career is pursuit of a value - not an attempt to avoid disaster or correct a mistake. Is it right that instead of pleasure, all one would feel is the pain of duty and self-repression? No. Such a clash is a call to look for a mistake in one's thinking (as I learned the hard way), not a call to continue things as the day before.

This example demonstrates how rationalism leads to living one's life under negative motivation - out of a sense of duty to obey moral principles, not out of sense of acting selfishly to achieve one's pleasure. (The rationalist idea, in this case is to decide arbitrarily that success in school has to be, regardless of its actual nature, the virtue of productivity).

Now what would be the long-term consequence of motivation from negative emotions in pursuits of values? Over time, it destroys everything it touches.
In schools, kids are taught that they are good if they learn despite being bored. Over time the result is that they come to hate learning. Not just learning at school, but the act of putting mental effort into anything.

As an adult, you may start with a job you dislike, training yourself over time not to notice your boredom. After enough time, you lose motivation to do any kind of work at all, even one you could have enjoyed before. How did this happen? you trained yourself to make your emotions irrelevant to your actions. You trained your subconscious to associate "work" with suffering and self-compulsion.

If you view morality as a duty to hold yourself to - you will continually repress personal desires in order to be "in-line" with those principles. At the end of this road, you either lose sight of what "you" is, or you throw morality completely and attempt to live without principles at all.
The pursuit of moral values, or virtues, or becoming the hero you have in your mind - should be from positive emotions.
If it is not, that is the time to stop and think - make sure you really understand the principles you attempt to live by. Make sure you can see how those principles are good for you.

There is only so much time that negative motivation can carry a man.
This motivation is meant as a temporary assistant - not as fuel for every-day actions throughout life. This motivation is "crash and burn", its end result is always bad if used to pursue values.
After 4 years of stress and repression I had in the technological institute I studied in, I know.

To the extent that a society is irrational (like bad schooling system), some conflicts are bound to cross your way.
In a dictatorship, one's actions are motivated by fear as the only possible way to function.
But - Taking whatever existing conditions under account, try to pursue your values by the desire to gain pleasure. It is selfish. It is good. It is what makes life worth living.

Self Esteem, confidence and Motivation

2009-02-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

Self esteem is required for motivation. The role of self esteem, or more specifically the self esteem we feel about ourselves in specific fields is ingrained in motivation to pursue values in that field.

The reason we are built this way is because it serves our survival. For example: Suppose you're building a house with your own hands, but you know from experience that you are bad with hammering nails to the beams, you feel lack of confidence in that field: this serves to protect you from the damage you may cause (to your life and your values). Your recognition of your own ability in that field determines your emotional motivation to pursue it. On the other hand, if you're good with hunting animals or dancing, you have high confidence in your ability to pursue that value, you'd feel motivation to pursue it. When you succeed, it reinforces your confidence, and also serves as a reward. So self esteem is both a requirement and a reward for action.

This mechanism can work against you (when a mistake is involved): one example is insecurity with "hitting on" women. In this case, the mechanism of confidence<-->motivation prevents you from not hammering nails into your hands, but potentially (if a mistake is involved) also to be too afraid to hit on women or go after something you desire.

An example of that would be someone who expects himself to succeed at something right away without a process of learning. When he would fail (and he would, since learning is always required), he would get a sense of insecurity which would dismotivate him from pursuing that activity in the future. And it would be a false conclusion about his own ability.

Confidence by itself, feels so great, that it can be by itself an added motivation to achieve something. Doing something well, allows you to look at yourself later on as the one who created something well, and be proud of yourself (in other words have higher self esteem). Such motivation is in the background of the desire to improve and do things well (not just "get them done").

Self-esteem is a general form of confidence: it does not apply to the ability to achieve values in a specific field, but to living as a whole (to your ability to live). It primarily comes from how one's actions and their result stand in relation to one's principles. Confidence in many small fields integrates itself in our mind to self esteem as a total sum.

Achieving confidence depends on achieving one's goals, and achieving one's goals depend on one's principles (among other things).

For example, great entrepreneurs like Herbert Dow,were guided by the principle of making a living by means of creating new products, and doing it well. Dow held this principles not as a mere intellectual idea, but as a passion for creation. He was also rational - never overlooking facts, and he had the correct principles in economics. As a result, he was successful. He was confident, and his confidence grew with his success.
His self esteem was high because he had the right principles for living, and throughout his life - his actions matched his principles.

To the extent a person conceptualizes certain virtues as practical to his life, his self esteem will depend on the relation between his actions and what he perceives as virtues.
If he comes to the wrong conclusions, he will not be able to achieve his goals, and he will become insecure the more years go by.
For example, if someone believes in mystical powers, and he thinks a man's worth is measured by his ability to possess mystical powers - he will fail time and time again in achieving his goal. He may wish for a red traffic light to turn green, but it won't in most times. He may try to guess your astrology sign, but fail most of the time. And so on. Eventually, he will not be able to achieve self esteem because his principles and ideas are not in line with reality.

Human beings think in principles. some animals learn from experience and probability (for example, a stick can pull a banana in certain situations). Human beings form ideas, concepts and principles to condense our knowledge.

Likewise, we use principles to guide our actions, and how we live.
And this is why self esteem depends on principles, and the relation of one's actions and their success to one's principles.

Ethics and emotions - How to achieve happiness

2009-01-14T03:19:00.000-08:00

The purpose of ethics is happiness, and emotions come from subconscious ideas - therefore, to be happy a man MUST untangle and straighten out his subconscious ideas. Studying ethics and applying the learned principles (even under full understanding) will not suffice.

To demonstrate: Imagine someone who realizes that altruism is wrong. He understands what a sacrifice is, and why it is a bad way to live his life. However, subconsciously he still holds years of automatized appeasement of people he loves and avoid hurting their feelings.

When he faces a conflict about appeasing them or acting selfishly, he experiences conflicting emotions. On one hand, he wants to do what's right. On the other hand, he feels the pressure of guilt to act like he has acted in the past - not to be bad, not to hurt their feelings.If left unsolved, he is bound to either act against his emotions and feel guilt, or act according to his emotions and again feel guilt for not doing what he consciously know is right.

Psychological heath requires that a man acts to satisfy his emotions and give them physical form in his every day life. This could be having sex in response to sexual desire, avoiding a painful situation, refraining from actions that makes one feel guilty, eating a candy one desires, etc'.
However, pursuing emotions blindly can be bad for one's long-term happiness. To illustrate: In all these examples the emotion (sexual desire, pain, guilt or "spiritual" hunger) could be a response to wrong premises with results such as being attracted to sluts, finding introspection painful, feeling guilty for telling someone a painful truth because it hurts their feelings, or wanting to stuff one's face with food to dull chronic anxiety.

And just as a diet alone will not work for the person from my last example - so will change of behavior with accordance to an understood system of ethics by itself will not work to make a man happy. It is insufficient.

Ethics and psychology are bound together. Ethics is a science that teaches a man how to live and achieve happiness. Psychology teaches him (or should teach him) how to integrate what he knows by reason - with his subconscious. To correct wrong subconscious ideas and methods, and as a result to be able to experience the correct emotions in response to his environment and to himself.

To summarize and repeat: To achieve happiness, a man must work to straighten his subconscious ideas to match that which he consciously holds as true.

Concretizing what you learn and making your understanding of ethics very very good helps a lot (and in fact does most of the work) of reprogramming your subconscious. However, introspecting the content of your subconscious and correcting it is a necessary supplement (for achieving happiness).

We humans are built to use emotions as motivation force. Emotions not only tell us if something is "for" or "against" us, they also suggest and "push toward" a certain course of action (like running away from danger, acquiring the subject of one's desire or avoiding pain). Emotions (every emotional reaction) lay on the sum of one's subconscious knowledge - which is huge. And at the same time the emotion we feel arises quickly in response to a given situation. This makes emotion highly valuable tools of survival since they provide a "driving force" toward a certain course of action quickly, while taking under account vast amount of information (all your knowledge, essentially, that you acquired since you were a baby).

Therefore, psychological health requires that a man be open in his life to act to satisfy his emotions, to be motivated and guided by them (with reason as the final arbiter). To be closed to your emotions and treat their satisfaction as secondary or meaningless is to pursue something other than your own happiness, and to detach your values from that which you desire - making the pursuit of your values a purely intellectual matter, without enjoyment.

To give content to your emotions (dictate the content of your subconscious ideas) and make them reality-based, and non-contradictory - a man must use reason. Emotions should be the primary driver in your everyday life with reason at their constant check-up, and long-term maintenance worker.

The brilliant murderer - Character Analysis

2009-01-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

The character of Hannibal Lecter - a brilliant, genius psychologist (at least, brilliant at psychological analysis, not necessarily at therapy), and at the same time a vicious murderer.

The viewer gets the feeling that Lecter understands everything, that he has all the deep, hidden answers we've all been looking for or try to run away from. His utterly logical manner and brilliance of psychological understanding of people leads one to think that Hannibal represents the ultimate correct human behavior, the one that we would all adopt, if only we discovered the things he has discovered.

I think this represents the idea that the correct human way of living is as a predator: not just of the world, but of human beings as well. That ethics, like Nietzsche thought, is a self-made bondage, to be broken by the strongest of men.

I used to find this sort of character - of the brilliant murderer very intriguing. They always appear as logical, brilliant, independent (like Jack of all trades from the T.V. series Profiler). But now I understand its essence: a soul starved to make others face their own depravity and weaknesses, in desperate need of proof that their way of life is justified. They are especially attracted to people who are independent, kind, and see the good in others (In Profiler it was Sam Waters, in Silence of the Sheep it's Clarisse, the FBI agent). Because that is the ultimate opposite of them - that is what they must persuade and win over. They think that any human kindness or appearance of goodness is a result of self-deception of ethics, a result of that self-inflicted-bondage of conforming to the ethics that society prescribes. Thus, any kind behavior is weak behavior of a man too weak to break his bondage. The sight of an independent, thoroughly honest person enjoying other people's warmth is a warning sign to them, because it is the proof that they are wrong. And at the same time, they sense that such a character has succeeded at something they had failed at, and therefore they also fall in love with them.