Note.

Note to the reader. Feedback about the posts and my views in general are highly appreciated. I welcome  the opportunity to interact with my audience so that I can clarify my views to them, or they to me better.

3.

Social Norms Part 2. We live in a world where everyone yearns to live a life different than what they have. We see the wise men advising us to be satisfied in what we have at hand. We see the leaders in the arts and sciences, the pioneers of their respective field telling us to never sit around doing nothing, to grab any and every opportunity that life throws at us, to leap forward not caring of the consequences. We live in a world of hypocrisy, where an adventurous attitude is unwise, and a steady life is too boring.

Once we have passed the phase of elementary education, giving an insight in all possible fields of work (hopefully), we have to choose our vocation, and set our course for a steady life in the future, so that we are self sufficient in life. We work, for the initial period being full of energy and dedication, being new at it. We find a partner, and another phase of this life begins, one whose end is marked by what is known popularly as a mid-life crisis. We pass through it and reach a stage of old age. We now must have time to appreciate "the little things in life" (apparently). Then we die. The End…

This is the story of the average adult phase of human life. Something so important that I mentioned it here, given the fact that everyone knows it. It is the actual time that an individual can "contribute" to the society around. Why do we fear to do what is logical? It is not logical at all for this life to be normal.

Getting to the point now, the unwanted, biggest obstacle amongst the prevalent social norms around, the one that is the most hindrance, is the importance of a median. Why must we have an average in everything?

It is time now that the society grows up. It is time now that it understands the importance of thinking. The very existence of an average arises from the laziness of making informed decisions. If its average, its okay. Okay won't change anything. Okay isn't good enough for survival. Ants don’t stop collecting food once they have enough ration for every member of the colonies. They go on. And on. Until they can. The reason they can do this is that they are not bound by any invisible contract that a particular average is mandatory. If any member gathers less than usual, or more than usual, they know that for both the cases, the best effort was given. We have forgotten amidst these norms of ours, that we are like any organism on this earth, if not the universe; we must survive. Not just on an individual level but as a species. It is time we change the game. It is time we change our goal on the level of our race. We live to better the lives of everyone around us. This is the humanitarian aim. We must now live to excel. On an individual level. We must strive to live in a world where art is created for the purpose of kindling our imagination, dams are designed and built ingeniously to generate more available power, gadgets are made for making more free time available to be productive. When a new stride is taken in any field, it should not be required to be questioned on an ethical or moral point of view. Because ethics/morality are the second biggest hindrance amongst social norms. It is time we take in the fact that there is no divine rulebook or guideline that we must live by. That is something that other creatures need. As humans we have an advanced brain to help us do that. We all can think. So why should be knowledge a sin? It made sense when we were unaware of our thinking capabilities. Not now. We must understand the role morals play in our lives, reason why they exist, imbibe that in our thinking, and then abandon them. Because they weren't made to fit in every situation that we face.

Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and even Steve Wozniak, amongst others have raised concerns over development of artificial intelligence. They say that at one stage, machines will reach a stage where they are smarter than us. Computers are becoming smarter by the day. Why not us? Why be lazy and stop innovation? Why not take steps to reform our current norms? Finland has recently announced the decisions to scrap subjects in schools in preference to individual topics being taught and evaluated upon, breaking barriers for interdisciplinary studies. We must understand from this that no radical steps be necessarily taken to evolve; just thoughtful alterations are good enough in the beginning.

And now we arrive at another fundamental error prevalent in our system. In order to solve a problem, we must trace it back to its roots. So in order to tackle the problems we face in adulthood, we must look towards our childhood. Our parents are inarguably the biggest influence of our childhood. They teach us every aspect of living, and introduce us to these norms. They are bestowed upon an unquestionable authority: they know the best for their child. This norm, of blindly accepting this belief as a fact, needs to be questioned. I will take it up in the next post soon. So long, and I'll be back.

2.

Social Norms. These little set of rules make up what happens to be the most influential factor in human behaviour after free will, even overtaking it in few instances. Many of these are supposedly the advice given by wise men of the past, who mysteriously have disappeared of the face of earth in modern times. We hear the many pioneers of this new age advising us to break free of these binding contracts of the society in order to advance in an era of freedom of speech and thought (though no one could stop you from doing so earlier). But the intelligent question that we must first face is "Why must we abandon the social norms that hold the fabric of society together completely? Have we fully understood why something that the society dictates is full of crap, before we thrash it out of our lives?". This is what I mean to take up here.

As I like to say "Rebel for the rebellion's sake, not for the sake of rebellion." Misinterpretation and misinformation, according to me are the biggest mistakes that we as a cultured civilized society undergoes. Though we haven't reached even the base of the pinnacle of what we can achieve as a species, it is time we seriously stop and work out how we are going to climb this summit. The world has a habit of listening to others opinion without processing the meaning and implications of the opinion itself. I have seen the qualitative spectrum of people, if not quantitative. There exists a class of people who will follow anything as long it doesn't hurt them, in the near future at least. These are the normal people, or sheep as the religion likes to believe. Then there is a class of people who follow their minds instinctively, irrespective of the advice they get or obstacles they face. They are what the world likes to call rebels. Some of them succeed brilliantly in their endeavours and go on to become legends beyond their graves. Others, well are not so lucky. Then there are those who feel lost throughout their lives, being trapped inside the cocoon of these norms, not abandoning them for the fear of being different, but yet hating and loathing them at every step. Though the people we know are unique individually, having many traits in their behaviour but yet I think they can be approximated to one of these three, or somewhere in between any two. Ayn Rand, whose works have caught my attention recently and have provided me with lot of pre-analysed data, has actually strengthened my opinion to some extent. She however, in my humble opinion misses out an important point in all the worship of the so called "producers"; How to mend the attitude of the commoners? Going on a strike (Atlas Shrugged) is a rather crude way, and not everyone can bear out for so long. In the Fountainhead, the character of Henry Cameron is the one that we should worry about, for many like him cannot take what the world throws at them, and in the end they disappear into oblivion. The world has to change, by changing the way people perceive deeds of others. 

But before we take a look at these norms, we must understand how a society behaves. A society has the sole purpose of sharing resources amongst each others for the overall development of everyone in this group. In order to be fair with everyone, it elects/selects a leader/council of leaders to decide how all the resources are to be distributed. Laws and conventions spring forth from such a fair distribution based on the need and capability of individuals within this group. Sub-groups are formed with the purpose of completing various tasks and so on. The members receive remuneration for the services provided, which in primitive societies consisted mainly of physical hard labour, in fields or quarries or elsewhere. The leaders received a larger share of the profits for the purpose, for the part they played in planning how the tasks are done. This is exactly what people have forgotten over time, the importance and task of a leadership. For them the leadership always existed, and they being good (or bad) citizens simply follow orders (or don't).

In ancient Greece and India and everywhere else, the philosophers and wise (generally old bearded men) were the leadership of primitive, small groups, which had just begun accumulating into larger societies. This has now led to the illogical norm of elders being wiser. I have myself seen many contradictions, though this is slowly being dissipating (I hope). The recent times have seen many feminist groups springing up to defend women's rights. The question we should ask and answer is that why was it necessary for them to feel the need to speak up? Isn't it obvious that men and women are equal? The answer is : It is not. We have a ten thousand year of a period of agrarian and hunter life since society came into existence, as opposed to a maximum of 200 years of modern lifestyle of mentally challenging work. We see women blaming men for not being forward thinking enough, and men blaming women for being too "feminist". Stop and think people. One cannot forget biological factors; and I am not talking about the 'genders being different', but the factor of evolution of the society as a whole. A society is, in my opinion as complex as any species, and it has no idea right now exactly how much the world has changed in the past 150 years. With the advent of electricity, computing, and advanced machinery, we are developing at a rate that is exponential in terms of the previous 5000 years. But evolution doesn't care how fast you go; it will pull you back to its method of trial and error variations, at its own pace. Why do we see many women slowly taking in oppression when they can reject and stand against it? It is generally not a question of courage, instead they are more comfortable being oppressed by the men in their lives than living a free life with no one to dictate to them. It is that somewhere in their minds, they believe that the man will feed them. They are hardwired that way since childhood, and they hardwire their children likewise. They feel uncomfortable otherwise. Unless we tackle the situation at the root level, no laws, no groups, nothing can change what is happening around the world as soon as we would like it to change. It will change, eventually, naturally, in another hundred years or so. What we are facing now is a period of 'mental gap', where our mind is lagging behind its own creations and inventions, something which I believe hasn’t occurred until now. We are facing more and more ethical dilemmas in our day to day life, because we aren't equipped to face and judge them in a smart way. My previous post gave what I believe is a logical method of decision making. We must question everything that comes our way, trying to know why something exists, trying to dig up its roots, understanding the pulse of the situation and acting surgically by informing the people around us. The point that the capitalism supporters have sacrificed in order to overthrow communism is the basic necessity of thinking for the good of others. However we try, mankind as a species can never move forward until we work for the greater good. The point to be noted is that we need to find out what is this greater good. Sacrificing excellence so commoners may feel happy is certainly not it. Instead it is to make the people yearn to achieve excellence.

This post will come to many as something they have heard before, but it is not for those people. This is a call for such people to educate those around them and spread this to those who ''don’t get it'''. So long, and I'll be back.

1.

"Why do we fall? So that we may rise again". This line from Nolan's  Batman series brings forward one of the major questions that we would like to answer once and for all. We often comment that we must learn from our mistakes. But I think that we must learn from the actions of everyone around us as well. Achievements and mistakes as well. Which brings me to the next thing which the movie brings to my mind. Fear. "Nothing is more fearful than fear itself". But what does it mean in the first place? I think it means that underlying amongst the hearth of our minds is the very fear to think.

We fear what we cannot comprehend. We fear a dragon more than a tiger, because we do not know how it behaves around us, as compared to a tiger. Humans, like every other animal around, wishes to have total control of the things around. Things which they can't control, they fear. That is the sole reason why for early man, thunder, fire, wind and the other such phenomena of elemental nature were literally gods. This is, why a necessity for a god to exist in a society. Because the things the common man can't explain, he likes to control by assigning it to god, thus regaining what he views as control.

So when a person is born who thinks differently, the fear of this unknown behavior seeps in and everyone around seeks to discredit him. However when somebody that the common people do revere accepts the newcomer, even praises him, then they still fear him and respect him out of this lack of understanding. This has happened a lot in history, when a leader emerged with different ideas than than the ordinary, he was opposed, accused, attacked, lynched even crucified. When later he was accepted, he was made a god who they still don't understand.

We see that terrorists around the world are punishing innocents for literally stupid reasons stating that they have wronged them. Isn't it a bit pitiful? Because I think that more than the people who suffered, the ones that deserve pity are most of the perpetrators, for they are prey to the manipulation of the few who lead them. Perhaps I will save this for later.

We say that when faced with a dilemma, we must follow our heart. What is it that the heart thinks (assuming it can)? If the brain thinks up of these two possible alternatives why can't it decide as it does when deciding between vanilla and chocolate ice cream? Emotions. We can't quantify emotions. But why can't we? Why is it so difficult to judge feelings? 

The answer lies in the fact that unlike material things, we have a difficulty in valuing feelings. In order to get around this problem we need to quantify emotions by using an appropriate unit. But we have to choose intelligently as this unit needs to be universal to all kind of feelings. I think that satisfaction (albeit in a broader sense) will be appropriate for most cases.

Now as we have allotted a variable to our immeasurable quantity, it is time to plug in our comparison equations. I must agree that doing this is the most difficult part; it is doing what is poetically known as "Weighing emotions", but we never learn until we try. To simplify it further, we must convert every other factor that we consider important into this new variable; money, time, comfort amongst others. Also important is the cumulative 'satisfaction ' of the people around us; our friends, family and the satisfaction their satisfaction gives us. after all this is taken care of, then we let algebra fall into place. And voila.

I know that what I described above comes about like a preaching, but trust me it is not. I will write about it in detail later. So long till then.......

0.

As the name suggests, this post is all about giving an introduction to the blog and the upcoming posts.  My name is Rahul, and I am an undergraduate student majoring in Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. I've observed things in the behavioral pattern of people as well as society as a whole. Isaac Asimov has often brought forward the concept of psychohistory in his works, which has influenced me to some extent. This is my attempt at going forward with the idea, in my own way. This blog gives my view of the world (which I believe is analytical to some extent) and its inhabitants. I do not have a great command over the English language, however I pretty much tend to be straightforward. Pardon me for any grammatical errors and shortcomings in vocabulary. I intend to give clear and concise pictures through my posts. The posts are not in any particular order.