Modesty, honesty and friends

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...

Work, Games and self-esteem

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? 

1. 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. 
   
   
   
2. 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. 
   
   
   
3. 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. 
   
   
   
4. 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). 
   
   
5. 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?

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

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

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

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.