Tag: connection

On Science, Religion, Lucky Numbers, and our Need to Link Every Unassociated Thing

On Science, Religion, Lucky Numbers, and our Need to Link Every Unassociated Thing

It’s in human nature to subconsciously beat our brains out to make weird connections between unfamiliar people, things and unrelated events before trying to come up with a logical explanation to prove what our minds had falsely linked long before. We all do this as a means of gaining familiarity towards the unknown, as once we make connections that could allegedly explain the scary, the uncertain unknown in any way, our fear becomes beatable, bearable, predictable and later, even prone to manipulation for some to rule others.

When science was nonexistent or still taking its baby steps, we considered lightnings and thunderbolts to be the doings of an angry god punishing us and when we reacted in any meaningless way out of fear and sheer panic, we believed our actions were to take credit in stopping a meteorological event which would have ceased by doing nothing anyway. Soon after, we began performing meaningless rituals, like prayers, dancing and even appointed the first lightning banishers as shamans or wise men to protect our wellbeing in the times of danger. Centuries passed, and science gradually evolved to explain the mysteries of our world, but we still haven’t changed at our core. Most of us still believe a lucky shirt worn on a day expected to turn out bad would help us into changing it for the better. How else could the link between a piece of manmade fabric and a successful job interview be explained other than the shirt being a lucky shirt! The truth simply lies on ‘believing’ being the key that turns the bad day into a good one, but we also need a reference point to do so… to boost our self confidence… to feel smart… to have power upon others… And that’s where the shirt comes in and our logic goes out.

On second thought, don’t wear your lucky shirt to a job interview if it looks like this!

It’s not just lucky objects that dictate our actions in such ways. Sometimes, it’s lucky numbers that decide our fate from picking out a wedding day to jotting them down as the next hopefully winning powerball (lottery) number. How some numbers come to be lucky for us isn’t a mystery either; it has the same working principle as the lucky shirt. When we come across a formerly insignificant figure, and something good happens, the incoherent connection is already up and running in our minds. It’s no wonder that almost nobody’s lucky number is 0 as we don’t see it around much! There are no days in a month starting with a zero, nor there are house numbers we run into in our daily lives, etc. with just a plain old zero. The number ‘0’ is still lucky on its own account, as it’s not labeled as an ‘unlucky’ numeral like the unfortunate ’13’, where our malfunctioning reasoning skills took over once more! The clerical error of an early translator resulted in the omittance of the thirteenth line (law) in the Code of Hammurabi, was one of the incidents tagging the figure as ‘bad’, or ‘unlucky’. And, when two different dinner parties in ancient lore, included a thirteenth guest, the unjust link between the number and it being bad solidified: Judas betrayed Jesus after showing up as the thirteenth guest in the Last Supper and the appearance of Loki (he was evil) in Valhalla as the thirteenth entity at a dinner party, sealed the fate of the number 13. It is surprising how ancient lore still has a tight grip on our reasoning skills centuries later.

Sometimes one more is too much!

Speaking of lore, just think how religion evolved from worshipping multiple, more vicious gods derived from nature to its current form of believing in a single, invisible higher power! It’s just that our brains are wired to create links where there are none when we encounter things we can’t explain. One of the mysteries we would never be able to solve, which is what happens when we die is also explained by the concepts of heaven and hell. Do good deeds in life, and you’ll drink wine from the rivers of a breathtaking garden, do bad deeds and you’ll burn for eternity with no cable TV. Wait! Cable TV? There can’t be that in hell, or at least not according to the holy books. Heaven and hell were depicted centuries ago and their appearance seem to have not changed at all, even today. Not one bit. Why? Because the lore says so! And, this happens in the modern world where a five-year-old non-fiction book is deemed as outdated! For me, there’s no life after death, but death after life has been proven. However, it feels good, even for me, to fantasize about an immortal life in a beautiful garden upon retirement from life.

My heaven would be less wild animals, more books and a working wi-fi

Lastly, we love our built-in crooked reasoning so much that we started teaching our ‘linking the unrelated’ method to animals, such as monkeys pushing buttons to get food. Poor primates must be thinking hard to figure out the link between a magic button and a bunch of bananas! Or are they?

For the majority of us, most things we encounter in life are still mysteries. Let them be, unless we can explain the unknown by science.

Abortion of the Inner Child

Abortion of the Inner Child

innerchild

We are born as small, cute and cuddly creatures; totally naked as there’s nothing to hide or be ashamed of, in this new, alien world. Soon as we start growing up, we display our emotions in the forms of genuine laughters or cries as honesty is always default at earlier ages. We are amazed by fireworks, cartoons etc. and believe in fairies, angels, monsters…

As children, we have huge dreams although our under-grown bodies have very limited capabilities. We are taught how to poop for instance. We think we can accomplish anything, but we are never given a chance. Our dreams get older and wither much faster than our bodies and brains.

Just as we reach our golden ages, we find out that we have to go to school and blend with the society and its unspoken rules. Just like all the junk in Pandora’s box, school teaches us useful stuff like reciting the periodic table!, as well as what’s right according to them and how to lie. All the contents of the education box are unleashed into our spongy, egg-shelled minds. Still, it never teaches us how to make deep, honest connections with others and be happy in life.

Late school era friendships start relying on selfish and personal interests. Most of us have friends so that we can show the world we are better than our buddies. We become jealous beings which will actually be the force that drives us into struggling to achieve so-called success in later life.

We graduate. We get jobs, routine becomes our thing. We work hard to afford things we don’t really need. We get bored and boring at the same time and start judging the few people, who are still clinging onto their dreams and inner child, as being immature and not acting their age. Perhaps it’s the big ball of fury and jealousy they have against us (Yes, I am with child) just because they have had an untimely abortion of their inner child.

We finally reach an age when most people expect us to die. It’s only then, we revert back to our childhood and do stuff which is considered stupid by the norms of the modern society. Luckily, old age is a great excuse to be truly ourselves just like back when we were children. But, in fact we have missed a whole chunk (the long, middle part) of our lives. The inner child has been reborn but sadly it doesn’t have much time now as it’s connected to our physical bodies. We never die alone in the end.

Magic ceased to exist for most people long ago whereas it’s all around us… just give a long hug to an upset person without uttering gibberish like “I know what you feel” or talk to your plants daily and observe the change. We are all magicians if we believe we are.

So, next time you see a child disguised in an adult meat suit,

…helplessly trying to tie their trainers…

Or…

…gaping with awe to their surroundings in a toddler’s toy shop…

Or…

…smiling upon listening to a well-known fairy tale they had heard 100 times before…

Or…

…cooking in the messiest way possible…

Just look them in the eye and hug them.

Love is all we need after all.

Why we like what we like

As technology keeps developing, we start drifting away from other individuals of flesh and blood close to us, trapping ourselves in prisons of solitude of our own doing (like social media…and oh! The irony!). Soon, we realize what we are desperately looking for… ; being connected to others in the first place, creating a weird dilemma … perhaps strangers but people…to real people who are geographically distanced hundreds of miles apart.

Our quest to find such connections has also affected the language we had been using for ages in unimaginable ways (though if I’m writing it here, it’s imaginable). 

The term “selfie” is a good word to demonstrate how much we progressed in terms of being connected to others; the society. 

The verb/slash preposition “like” nearly became more commonly used in its “noun” form in an overnight with the sudden impact of the social media like (here it’s a preposition) Facebook, Twitter and instagram. As we started liking (and here it’s a verb) weird looking babies’ pictures along with photos of cats, we started enjoying the impact of being liked by people whom we have never met in person. Then, the number of “likes” (and here it’s a plural noun) started to matter. Some people even paid (or still pay) money to purchase virtual followers or automatic likers. The quality of the content we like has also degraded from real works of art to masterpieces of rubbish that our stranger friends post daily. We like to be liked and this makes us proud somehow.

Here are the specifics of a social experiment I did a while ago: I posted the picture below on one of my social media accounts without a caption and guess how many “likes” I got?

38 likes within minutes…Wow! Maybe I do have some artistic qualities I’m not aware of.

P.S: Hit the like button for this article to honor the content and I’ll like one of your…err…stuff you posted online. 

Eye like. ..

image

This is a close up of my left eye. And below is me trying to understand…

When have we become so obsessed with taking meaningless selfies/close-ups to connect with others? What has changed so much that we try to mingle digitally? Why has making duck faces become more alluring than a simple, sincere smile? Is Uncle Scrooge becoming the next sex idol?
What’s next?

Social media and people’s con. ..nect. ..ion iss. ..ues.

image

It’s in our nature…we all want to connect like a tree digging its roots into mother earth. The earth understands the tree and it’s the same for the tree. The tree (technically, a sapling) grows, becomes stronger and bears fruit; the fruit of its own production. However, human relationships are nothing like that. ..at least not anymore. Unlike trees,  we dispatch our weakest roots trying to cling on cement, rubber, metal or anything else but earth. We die from the inside and we’re not even aware.
It didn’t use to be like this; meeting total strangers online with whom you have nothing in common but an Internet connection, or liking duck-faced weirdos; trying to post witty comments on their profiles just to be liked back. We used to follow influential people, true leaders, now we follow for follow.
Follow my blog. ..for more 🙂