How can men remain leaders in the face of feminism

 How do men remain leaders in a world where women became strong?

By adjusting their concept of what it means to be a strong man.

A leader can protect anyone under their wing, while bringing out the best in them. A leader cannot be a leader by putting down, downplaying and oppressing the skills, natural essence, potential, and talents of others. If they have to do that in order to maintain leadership, they are weakening the group as a whole, and weakening some individuals in that group.

That means that if a woman is good at nurturing children and bringing people together through empathy and building trust and cooperation, you don't put her down for being emotionally attuned, in order to elevate more masculine qualities like overcoming pain.

If a woman is good at problem solving and engineering, you encourage her, rather than encourage her to abandon that interest in favor of a more "feminine" role.

It means not tying your ego in being the best in everything, but instead at being the best at creating a strong team, and at using your aggression to protect its individuals when necessary.

This ideological change is not easy. I believe men and women have different biological inclinations and disposition toward a certain temperament and sets of skills. Men were born to fight people and obstacles, and they need to learn to overcome adversity in order to do that well. Unfortunately, they learned to differentiate and define themselves in contrast to feminine traits, which means that in order to elevate masculinity, femininity has to be put down. It has to be put down, even though the feminine traits of empathy, cooperation, attunement and nurture are required for the successful development of children, including male children. Children need warmth, tenderness and love, the same traits that adult males sometimes regard as "being a pussy".

A society cannot function in the long run with these ideas. And since modern ideas and technology now allow women independence, the conflict is no longer avoidable.

Tribalist aggressive mentality vs. enlightement

I think there is a pre-rational level of aggressive self preservation that all humans share, that is active in the absence of higher level abstractions.

Justice is a higher level abstraction than self defense: It involves identifying that other people are like you, and therefore they hurt just as you hurt. They care about their property like you care about your property. That abstraction ultimately leads to a moral conscience and self restraint: A person would not steal or harm others, and would become indignant when witnessing injustice inflicted on others.

But a person who did not perform that abstraction early on, will only care about their own suffering. The mechanism of anger still exists in them, and they will take hostile actions according to how they perceive others' behavior toward them, but they will support any unjust and vile action, so long as it aligns with their self interest (and I don't mean here, some objective self interest, but simply what they want and consider to be desirable).

I think one level above the most primitive form of self preservation exists the group identity. It's one step higher on the level of abstraction, but still includes your tribe vs. any other tribe. I think this level of abstraction is shared by tribe animals.

The next level of abstraction is humanity. A person learns to appreciate human life, regardless of race. They distinguish good vs bad people according to their actions toward others, instead of the color of their skin or the clothes they wear.
I think this level of abstraction collides with more primitive forms of tribe affiliation which exists in our psyche. But that point may be disputed.

Just as a gorilla will hunt and murder gorillas from other tribes, some people do the same.
It's interesting to note that it is likely only possible for humans to develop the phenomenon of psychopathy, in which a single person is stopped from developing an abstraction even on the tribe level, and is reduced to a circle of one. I think it is only human parents that can accumulate enough hate to raise a human beings that can be so defective in its capacity to trust and love. Animals would be driven by biology to care for their young and provide the necessary environment to become social. An animal cannot develop an abstraction of "the value of living things" on a conceptual level (although cross-species rescue behavior has been documented). It is more limited to its tribe of familiar members and genetic bonds.

It becomes confusing for modern, enlightened people to understand tribal behavior of other humans. We can't comprehend things like the holocaust. The Germans were not psychopaths; they did not murder their own kind. They came home at the end of a work day at the Jewish camp to a loving family. That is the horror we struggle to comprehend. They were not animals; they were something worse. Something that had the potential of develop an abstract understanding of the value of human life and justice, and instead chose the level of animals.

But my point is that, we should understand that the highest level of abstraction, the human being capable of valuing life as such, and justice regardless of race - is not a given, it is not a guarantee just because someone is human. It is a potentiality that requires other developmental components to come into fruition.

In the meanwhile, those of us who did develop this way have the burden of leading the world in two ways: one intellectual, of spreading the same values, ideas, and kindness to others; and the second is self preservation, when we are being targeted by those on the animal level of functioning, when they try to harm us.

Is qualia the same for different people?

It is said that we can't know for certain if one person's experience is the same as another's. For example, just because two people name the same color "red" does not mean that they experience the same thing.

But, I'd like to poke some holes in this idea. Of course, we cannot reach certainty at this point, since we do not understand exactly how the brain generates our experience (or how they correlate). But the way to induce is to piece together small pieces to form a picture, rather than to prove a theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. You cannot prove that which you have not yet discovered, and the process of discovery has to be understood as vitally important, for us to allow its precarious nature to exist within our mind.

So if we take this principle of induction as valid, and apply it here, let's consider the reasons why it is reasonable to expect that our qualia (conscious experience) IS actually the same, or very similar.

For starters, we can observe the general nature of living things within the same species. We have genetic variations, but there are certainly more things in common than differences. We all have the same organs that perform the same functions. We all have the same structure of a brain that develops similarly. Yes, there are variations, but compare a human being to a leaf or a rock, and it is immediately clear that we are more alike than different.

We also know that consciousness emerged later on in evolution, and not right from the start, which means that consciousness is a result of evolution, perhaps a likely result (maybe even inevitable), but still, it is a process which is subject to all the principles of evolution, just like other processes, such as breathing or moving.

Therefore, our consciousness can be judged the same. Do different people have different legs? There are variations, but essentially, they still work the same and produce the same function. Same thing goes for all other things, such as the immune system, circulatory system and so on.

I think this makes it LIKELY that this is also true of consciousness and of the brain.

And so this means that while there may be slight variations in the "red" qualia, it is far more likely that it is the same rather than different. Just like the lungs of human beings are more the same than different.

Also, I think it helps us understand out own consciousness better, as a process which undergoes selective pressure to produce survival and reproduction (or to carry on the genes).

OK so. "smart intellectuals" may put you on the stand and remind you that "oh no, you cannot be certain that your red is the same as the other person's red, and don't jump to conclusions blah blah blah", but the INDUCTION way of thinking would suggest putting more weight on all the "common sense" factors that may be hard to name, that suggest that there is no bloody reason why evolution would work so hard to produce a solution that works, only to modify it drastically among the individuals of the same species. Right. So screw the skeptic intellectuals and their methodologies.

OK, that's what I wanted to say, only without aiming at starting a war with anyone. Red is red. More or less.

The importance of non-verbal communication

You know, something really interesting that occurred to me, is that as a species, we are uniquely disconnected from our "gut feelings" in favor of processing verbal content. You can see it in "The Dog whisperer", where he shows how dogs can immediately sense people's state of mind, mood, ability to lead, whether or not they are calm, and so on. They can immediately sense and respond to your "energy" through very subtle things like the way you hold the leash, how you breath or how you stand. Now humans can definitely read all that stuff, and we DO, but we prioritize processing verbal content over this. As a result, we habitually suppress that type of information, or take much longer to pay as much attention to it as the things that are SAID.

One reason is that our mind is complex and has a layer of abstract thought, which is very dominant. Another reason is that CULTURALLY, we teach ourselves to pay attention to words over gestures and non-verbals.

We even have the idea that since we cannot objectively interpret non-verbal cues, that it is best to ignore them. That's why dogs can sense moods so much better than we do. Let me give you an example... You are shopping at a supermarket late at night. Someone in line behind you starts asking you about the price of products. They are asking you what are you buying and whom you are buying it for. Now the verbal information may be very trivial, but the non-verbal... wooha! Danger Will Robinson! The non-verbal communicates that this person has a right to cross your boundaries without asking permission. If they do this with information, it is a good indication that they can do it physically as well. That's also why a person can spend a long time debating someone else who is treating them as if their life, feelings and well being do not matter, and keep responding to the verbal ideas being put forth. This doesn't just work for negative non-verbals, but for positive ones as well. But as a society, we will tend to deny non-verbals and many times scold someone for making them explicit. We have the habit of lying about them. Because, verifying them is more difficult to do objectively. And if we want to function as a society, we would like to be able to agree on the facts. But - does it serve us, if it can land us in a situation where we accept a truth like: "My feelings don't matter" over facts about China in the 1920's as more important?

Ayn Rand's True concept of 'Selfishness'

Ayn Rand is thought of as opposing charity, friendship or good will, while encouraging selfishness.

But what was her Real concept of selfishness? What did she stand for and what was she against?

Certainly NOT what today's thick headed idiots think she did.
I am referring to persons such as Hitchens [Link] or this dude [Link] which says the following about her views:
"She thought that all the government programs, Medicare, social security etc' were for the weak, and that being selfish was the best thing you could do. Being altruistic and helping others she thought was evil".

Right, Ayn Rand; the exterminator of the weak.

Dude, what the hell is the matter with you? Are you really that stupid, too lazy to try to study someone' actual views or just finding it easier to attack a straw man? Yeah. Freakin' Liar. Aren't you tired of these?

Ayn Rand was not against friendship, family, love, gift-giving, providing help or charity to someone or doing something to make someone else's life better. She was not against taking out the garbage on your wife's turn when she is having a bad day and is tired. Ayn Rand had a very romantic view of love. She saw it as one of the highest experiences a man can have and she would certainly be motivated to give a lot of herself to those she loved.
Regarding charity: In her novel, Atlas Shrugged, the main character, Dagny Taggart offers a free meal and a ride to a homeless man that has boarded the train illegally. The reason she did is because the man appeared to have been a hard working man one time and she offered him charity out of respect for that.

So this may come as a shock to some idiots out there, but Ayn Rand was not fighting for the extermination of the weak and the prevalence of value-less sociopath gold diggers. She was also opposed to the type we consider "selfish" today, who has no moral values and would sell their own mother to slavery to make an extra penny.

Her concept of selfishness takes some attention to grasp and a moment of concentration and thinking. Something a lot of people are apparently incapable of doing nowadays. So listen up, jagheads, because I am about to explain what she really meant.


In her words;

"The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment."

She does not approve of altruism either. Ayn Rand supported Rational Selfishness. This means a way of living in which a man takes the time to think about what is good for him or bad for him, both for the short term and the long term and chooses his values by thinking. It is a system in which his values are rational and required for human life, instead of values which are destructive, against the requirements of human life or are just senseless. 

She does NOT mean the commonly understood concept of selfishness, and that is the source of the confusion.

Ayn Rand thought that humans beings are a social creature, with love and friendship being a very important value. Her heroes were men of integrity who produced and traded for their existence, not robbed and deceived to get their hands on a pile of money. Like, hello? The guys that did do that were the villains. Didn't you read the book?
John Galt quit his job as an engineer to start a war again the world to provide a better world for the woman he loved. How many men do you know today who would take this course of action? They preach 'altruism' but no love is possible when one is being made to feel guilty for everything and when one is expected to deliver "love" as if they were a cow at a dairy farm.

Ayn Rand thought that one gives love, friendship and sometimes charity when one judges the receiving individual to be deserving of it. She considered it a selfish delight to give something and invest in those one loves and love itself, is a very selfish value.

She recognized that peaceful cooperation and trade among men was the only way to prosperity and therefore she considered a thief immoral.
She thought that to be selfish meant to think hard of one's decisions, not to blindly chase every random desire. She one should live their life passionately, while making choices based on thinking.

The secrete to understand her concept is that charity does not have to be a product of altruism. Caring for someone enough to help them, can be a selfish act. It is selfish because other people are of spiritual value to us, as well as material. By valuing ourselves we also value others with similar virtues and it is natural to express that value in one's behavior, in a way that works with one's specific context of life.

Anyway I hope I helped you understand what Ayn Rand's "Selfishness" is all about. It is not an easy concept to grasp since it is so different from today's concept of "selfishness".
I suspect a lot of people would come to this point without a feeling of new understanding, but rather something like: "well, she says that Ayn Rand thought friendship and love were good, and that Ayn Rand is not entirely opposed to giving, so that means that.... I know! It must mean that Ayn Rand was part altruistic, despite the evil things she preached for!" Well, no, chuckle head. That was not my point. My point was that she would give to others and consider it SELFISH. Yes, giving to others can be selfish. So in those times she gave of herself, she was following her principles to a tee.

That, my friend, is the whole point. Selfishness does not equal sociopath, certainly no in Ayn Rand's view. Her concept of a selfish man was a producer, an inventor, an industrialist, a hard working man happily doing his job well and making good friends, an artist, a family person hoping to raise his children well. All those are selfish actions according to her. They cease to be selfish when one does them out of duty - in THAT case they are altruism and she was against that.

So, good luck to you in your endeavor to understand Ayn Rand's morality and please share this article and forward it to others if you liked it and think it could set the record straight.


Peace and Prosperity to you, dear reader.

On setting Personal Boundaries

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

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

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.


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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"

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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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