Social Insanity

We all want to be the CEO, President, MVP, Entrepreneurs aka contemporary Socially affluent title of choice. I think we forget that we are the CEO of our own life - the summation of our limited existence, and shouldn't overly concern ourselves worry about becoming or not becoming CEO, famous, global, earth shaker etc etc too much. Because as humans we subconsciously link our self esteem to these things, meaning until the day that external subjective uncontrollable (ESU) THING happens, we will be not enough and consequently we will judge ourselves and be unhappy everyday. Despite enough data points and wisdom around us which confirms that the destination is never worth the time and strain it takes of this (external) journey. The journey is the dream because otherwise you go through life as a dead person to live that 3-5 weeks of high after accomplishing the subjective goal. Being human we know that we are complex, self serving, vain, seek validation, have a fetish of playing God (na...

Thought of the day - The smarter you are, the easier it is to come up with bullshit to avoid what makes you uncomfortable. Some of that is due to their ability to do mental gymnastics and get themselves out of any uncomfortable argument. Smartest people often struggle the most to resolve their emotional issues because they're busy outsmarting themselves rather than fixing the fucking issues - Mark Manson  P.S. The fault in our stars, beware if you're thinking you're outsmarting others, be careful that you're not only outsmarting yourself!  Solution: Aristotle wrote, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Being able to look at & evaluate different values without necessarily adopting them is perhaps the central skill required in changing one's own life in a meaningful way.

Note: This article is largely based on excerpt from Everything is F*cked by Mark Manson. The catharsis builds on the philosophical notion of nature of Values. READ more: For application and framework to finding out your personalised Values. Past a certain point, maturity has nothing to do with age. There are plenty of grown-ass children in the world. And there are a lot of aging adolescents. Hell, there are even some young adults out there. What matters are a person’s intentions.  The difference between a child, an adolescent, and an adult is not how old they are or what they do, but WHY they do something Wait I have a more basic question: How are values made, why do religions and cults share them, is it a spiritual thing or like a school thing?  Answer:  The process of forming values is complex and influenced by various factors. Life experiences play a significant role in shaping our values. Emotions, such as pleasure and pain, are generated through these experiences and...

Self-worth Is Contextual.  High and low self-worth appear different on the surface, but they are two sides of the same counterfeit coin. Because whether you feel as though you're better than the rest of the world or worse than the rest of the world, the same thing is true: you're imagining yourself as something special, something separate from the world. A person who believes he deserves special treatment because of how great he is isn't so different from someone who believes she deserves special treatment because of how shitty she is. Both are narcissistic. Both think they're special. Both think the world should make exceptions and cater to their values and feelings over others'. Narcissists will oscillate between feelings of superiority and inferiority. Either everyone loves them or everyone hates them. EVERYTHING IS AMAZING, or EVERYTHING IS FUCKED.  Mostly, narcissists are unbearable to be around. They make everything about them and demand that people around the...

I was discussing the ironies of human condition and related perils with my inner circle (conveniently). One of friends quoted a saying in Urdu, which loosely translates into "Wisdom is in limited supply and sacred generally, however, wise people are generally unsafe and probably endangered in an ‘ignorant’ surrounding" . We deliberated this for a while and concluded that – One of many subtle incivilities of our times is that: the rare bulb’s get hanged by the crowd of candles . N.B., We are going to push this BULB and CANDLE metaphor to the next level – so strap in your cord tightly! CANDLES are afraid of the light of the BULB – they do not know ‘WHY’ it shines so bright or powered differently or does not have to be sparked by a matchstick and has different thinking/beliefs to us. He is not enticed by the same thing, he is not afraid to shine alone and even if we ostracise him, he keeps shinning. Candles can easily join heads and continue the same bandwagon/following the floc...

Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is not to scorn or ostracise personality disorders. It is to develop a methodical understanding of presently available memoranda so we can cure ourselves from ourselves; through self-awareness, self-reflection and deep-rooted sense of finding something more important than ourselves! Also, this article is about people, irrespective of gender and nature of relationship (applicable for all personal dealings). Why write this article – well the people who have personality disorders, they feel pretty great but it's the ones who are around them, chose to love them, born with them or be with them, they're usually ‘miserable’. We all know that couple – who are picture perfect, say the right things, do the right things and take pictures at the right time etc etc – to later find out they had a topsy turvy relationship and it was all a façade, mere front with nothing tangible in it. A couple of months and sometimes even years later, it goes down in t...

It's one of those lessons, AFTER THE FACT EPIPHANY, like falling down the stairs, getting caught in a out of control rip while surfing, skinned and chafed knees after downhill skating, being around people who don't share same values/ethics/purpose who appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used in all respects i.e. parent, child, sister/brother, boss, employee and/or husband/wife. These are troubled individuals who are emotionally dysfunctional and no cure has been discovered. However, the new order/world reward these people - due to their ability to abuse/domineer others. We live in a materialistic and consumerist world, the guy who manipulates more and more people is considered a GOOD/RIGHT/EFFECTIVE boss, the women who uses flirting and after hours drinks for PROMOTION/RECOGNITION/PEOPLE PLEASING/VALIDATION is considered a smart professional. There's a saying narcissist's have big beach house...

I feel it's the right to time to discuss, acknowledge and address the subset of colour based superiority. Unlike racism this is perpetuated by coloured or minorities themselves. The same moral philosophy, religious doctrine applies to this WRONG existing belief that's been ingrained into the society. I've grown up with men/women who has unfathomably deluded entitlement, sense of superiority and perhaps belief that they have right to special treatment than everyone who is not as fair as them or down the 'Minority Colour Spectrum'. This inherent doll test is ingrained into the media as well. See how the dark brown people are background dancers/support in the movies, isn't that equal to fair washing (white washing) as we love to point out in Hollywood. What about diseases which ruin you mentally, spiritually and in instances physically. Not to mention, this also raises an entitled generation who perpetuate this crazy phenomenon and instill the same thing in their n...

I came across something that has fundamentally changed the way I see things and as human being are the only species in the universe which are capable of self-reflection/self-doubt and conscious decisioning to improve their existence/life, I think it’s pretty dope. Kant believed this one rule is the core premise of all ‘UNETHICAL’ behaviour in this world: “Each person must never be treated only as a means to some other end, but must also be treated as an end themselves.” Key issue: What is a " MEANS " and What is an " END " – it takes introspection to answer this question, as it is dependent on the subject matter/scenario. Image: Mark Manson Everyday/Mango examples: If I am hungry and I need to get to a ‘burger’ – then getting into the car to get the burger is the ‘mean’ and the ‘burger’ is the end. If I really want to meet a friend, I invite him to this burger place, then meeting the friend is the ‘end’ and now the burger is the ‘means. Lying is wrong because you ar...

What it is: The confirmation bias is when you look for and only use “facts” that support your pre-existing beliefs while, at the same time, ignoring any information to the contrary. This is often thought of as “cherrypicking,” although cherrypicking facts to support one’s views is usually done consciously. Confirmation bias happens unconsciously. The strange—but fascinating—thing about the confirmation bias is that it seems to run rampant when information is more available to people. That might seem counterintuitive on the surface. After all, more information should lead to better, truer beliefs, right? Well, no. The existence of the confirmation bias actually predicts the opposite: more information creates more opportunities to cherrypick the “facts” we use to support our beliefs. So, exposure to more information actually polarizes beliefs. This explains, in a nutshell, why the internet is a festering shit-heap for political discourse. Instead of changing our beliefs to adapt to new ...

Image: My Spirit Animal @ Mark Manson People who always need to be right tend to have fragile egos. When they feel as if their self-image has been threatened, they want to make themselves look bigger or smarter, so they blame others. It’s a coping mechanism to deal with insecurity . Recognising and admitting our insecurity and personal change are up there in the hyper difficulty cadence in human existence - you have to detach your embedded ego, pride, need to feel important and self-regard from the equation to heal yourself!!

People lack boundaries because they have a high level of neediness (or in psych terms, codependence). People who are needy or codependent have a desperate need for love and affection from others. To receive this love and affection, they sacrifice their identity and remove their boundaries (Ironically, it’s the lack of identity and boundaries that makes them unattractive to most people) - Constant need for reasurance that you're liked/loved - High demand for attention - Sacrificing ones identity - Failure to take responsibility for one's own emotions or OVERACCEPT responsibility for other people's emotions/action - Discomfort in being alone In my personal experience, this is probably embeded cultural conditioning (given fact) for middle class educated/professional men/women from minority cultures, more so in men given their self-esteem and self-worth being linked to title, degree, bank account, entrepreneurship, social importance. Image@Kerwinrae

artwork by Robin Isley @theartidote Research has shown that we (everyday folks)  automatically assign  favorable traits  such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence   to good-looking individuals (for a review of this evidence, see Langlois et al., 2000). The irony is that “good-looking people"  are aware that other people’s positive evaluations of them are not based on their actual traits and abilities  are caused by a general attractiveness or "halo"  ― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence Much like other human biases the ' Halo Effect ' is a well documented phenomenon, the reasons are complex and instinctively embedded in our eyes, such as being visible, tangible, mystery plays a part and perhaps our own escapism or insecurities - we admire what we value because it might as well depict our longing or if there is a loose value attachment (talent, kindness, honesty and intelligence - all good value as opposed to shitty ones, controllable, constructive...

I came across this statement the other day – ‘ Stop asking blind people to proofread your vision ’ – keeping the egoistic, self-serving and somewhat quote nature of the statement. I wanted to decipher a logical question – Feedback is ALWAYS useful and it does unmitigated and unalloyed GOOD? Let’s look into the science of Feedback to assess this statement. Feedback is about telling people what we think of their performance and how they should do it better—whether they’re giving an effective presentation, leading a team, or creating a strategy. And on that, the research is clear: Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning. More on that later. Underpinning the current conviction that feedback is an unalloyed good are three theories which the business world commonly accept as truths. I personally find all of them fascinating but it’s important we assess them to judge t...