elective series part 1.

Matthew Taylor's lecture on 21st century enlightenment was particularly intriguing, especially on hearing that 3 of the main values in my country's national pledge are inadequate myths. What I found most puzzling was his mention that increased incentives decreases the ability to perform complex tasks because that drives against the idea of setting target goals and working towards a fulfillment.

But having watched Dan Pink's take on Sam Glucksberg's experiment on verbal behavior and problem solving, it became clearer that incentives narrow people's mind and increases ability to perform mechanical tasks as opposed to cognitive tasks. Does that mean we should pay the manual labourers more and give white collared workers less incentives to increase productivity?

Also, perhaps affluent societies have lower levels of happiness but (no references here) we could be less unhappy as well. In other words, we have a neutralized wavelength of emotions. If you're a dialectic then working towards a happier/ more contented society would also mean you create a one which experienced bitter sadness as well. But if we are able to experience sadness through empathizing (let's say with a less fortunate society) instead, and in doing so fill the gap in the "required" emotional polar, are you able to cheat your own moral compass and become a truly selfish, happy community?

Let's give a crude example... a charity organization runs a campaign and tries to educate us on the sufferings in a certain country. We are shown pictures and told stories about their plight and we empathize with them. Compelled by our morals to help, we donate to the organization and then walk away feeling very blessed and warm and happy with the thought of helping someone and a sticker to prove so. But the organization is a bogus that just swallowed your cash as administrative fee to make you happy. Blow this up big scale and you get a twisted dystopia of suppressed sufferers to feed the emotional quota of the happy folks.

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I also think that people have an idealized view of what our future would be like. *warning: generalization* Something not too far from the flying vehicles and sci-fi dreams that started centuries ago. Or maybe the dream of utopian society of lush green fields and evolved intelligent beings peacefully co-existing with nature? And as we work towards creating that vision of ours, we create a lot of by-products that are unfinished or failed experiments and low grade prototypes of what we imagine in those visions. Like the sketches you do before the final piece.

But experiments and creations like these take time and resources. And of course finances. So these by-products are then marketed to the mass, aka ourselves, and advertised and touted as desires of the individual in a society. As such, our bigger inert desire for the future fuel the market to sell us what is essentially the rubbish sketches, and in order to sell those, the market creates in us a sense of desire for these failures. Before long, we demand for more and improved versions because they are merely pale comparisions of something that we think we know deep inside us. And that demand drives the market to supply us even more of the rubbish, faster and with more ting-tongs to distract us.

Anyway, that is my explanation for where the demand the fuels a consumer capitalist market comes from.

Abney Park Cemetery

so i've been tombstone hunting for the past few weeks and I came across this beautiful etching

How terrible it is to love something that death can touch

Tree of Life

"et egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos de radice eius ascendet "

Sadly, you're happier now.

do you think that in searching for happiness,  you find more sadness instead? Or perhaps in becoming a more cheerful person, you also had to experience the bitterness of deeper pain? Would you pay that price then? When you achieve a goal but instead of delirious jubilation usually associated with achievements you find yourself confused what would that mean? Hey! Just imagine what would happen if I mismatch all your emotions to wrong situations. You'll never know what to work for again!

I know people always look back at their childhood and say that times were happier back then. Perhaps it is not that childhood was a happier time. But that emotions in childhood was more moderate and mild? Or maybe it just became a distant memory of a hazy utopia we project into our own minds.

is faith a chemical reaction?

just like anger, emotions, feelings, love, though processes are discovered to be chemical and electrical reactions within the human body, is faith also as such?
If it is then discovered that faith is a complex process of hormones and chemical/electrical reactions of synapses. In that case, if scientists were able to recreate this chemical process through artificial means, wouldn't you be able to physically inject 'faith' into a human body? Just like how there are now pills to increase your endorphin levels to counter depression, hormonal injects to turn a man girly, would you soon be able to increase a person's faith in something?

"Expecting life to treat you fairly because you're a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge because you're a vegetarian" Dennis Wholey
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is life fair?


i wonder...


what if I try to be philosophical and say "it's not what life gives you, it's what you make of it" and thus life is fair?


but don't you need materials to create something? do we all have the same amount and same quality of material? If you give one person a pack of blue-tac and the other modeling clay with all tool provided and a kiln, and both are of equal talent, who would be able to reproduce a more accurate model of Beethoven's bust?


or maybe i'm too shallow to understand

how did it change?

do you remember when you're young and you were accidentally given a few extra coins in the change while buying a little snack or toy from the corner shop? And being the virtuous little child, you return the extra amount and the shopkeeper and everyone around beams with pride at the honest little kid while you're secretly chaffed at your amazing mathematical skills.

then you grew up and the few extra coins turn into hundreds of dollars and suddenly the beaming faces change into twisted swirls of agony and little beady eyes with weary wrinkles around the corners. You're no longer the bright honest angel but simply a foolish foolish naïve thing giving away cash that could be yours. The shopkeeper no longer smiles warmly at you but narrows his eyes in suspicion. You little cheater. The story changes.

was it just a superficial moral?