Social Insanity

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...

Image: Instachaaz I came across a ground breaking research piece from Harvard Business Review (HBR) which really hit home for me and evoked a lot of introspection around ‘werk, werk, werk, wellbeing and life’ titled ‘If you are so successful, then why are you working 70 hours a week? Soundbite was its due to ‘insecurity’. Analogous to the problems we solve in investment consulting, there are new and profoundly complex leadership challenges that professional firms (e.g. accounting firms, law firms, consulting firms) and other white-collar jobs are facing. We hear like this over and over again from people in noted white-collar jobs - that chronic overwork is bad for our mental and physical health and can seriously jeopardize the quality of our work (operational/business risk). We wish we could change the way we work, but we don’t really know how?? The new research on professional organizations, shows that our tendency to overwork and bu...