Paranoia, Stress and Insecurity has nothing to do with Living conditions.

My Mom once said - I don't know if I am introducing them to misery or helping them out of it! She was referring to free education she used to provide to uneducated slum dwellers in India. If you educate them they probably will question the situation they are in, and get introduced to how better off they could have been. But within their conditions - they were fine. They were living like us with similar mental traumas as us.

A school went into a Lock Down, that means there can be a risk within the school, scariest situation a school kid can go through. After keeping quite and hiding under the desks for an hour they started playing games. The situation had not changed but they got used to it.

I was in one of the team lunches at work, and people were talking about how scary it is to trust the corporate café. The cafe has all sorts of regulations on food and quality, and because of the regulations and information regarding them the employees were scared how dangerous things are!. The discussion also was on how water was tested and when found contaminated it was fixed by closing the water spout for weeks and somehow that was so scary!

You can live in most developed country and live in safest neighborhoods that are safe there is no change in people's paranoia and insecurity as compared to people in a war ravaged region like Syria. If there is no immediate threat then humans find news all over the world to create threat and get back to the paranoia and insecurity they are used to, and they are comfortable with! Zica virus is big news in US though the Virus is in some other country. Terrorism is big news though actually very few people are affected by it in the countries it is big news in.

Sometimes people divide this behavior into 'First World Problems' Vs 'Real Problems', sometimes people divide it between - 'Rich People' Vs 'Poor People'. But these divisions are superficial and mostly for entertainment they are not real. People are people, move them from one bracket to another and they will behave exactly the same as that bracket is supposed to behave. Same poor person is the one who becomes rich one day and is called rich person and behaves like a rich person. How much insurance is too much insurance? You just find same level of stress and paranoia to worry about you getting killed in neighborhood gangs crossfire and earthquake that you have made yourself believe will kill you because of fault lines you sit on. 

Humans just get used to their situations and maintain same amount of paranoia and insecurity as they were originally wired to have. The only way they break this is - when they realize and cultivate 'wisdom' to understand this aspect. If their is realization the fix is easy. But most civilization keeps running on auto pilot. 

This also explains why persecuted masses of people have same amount of paranoia and insecurity as compared to others. From the outside we wonder how the 'persecuted' masses should have a horrible lives and how it is unimaginable to think they can survive, but when you see the same people and live with them, they are having the same amount of paranoia and insecurity as you! Is that a good thing? probably not, but it is the reality we adjust to and realign ourselves to baselines presented to us. 

Politically Correct is Correct

Almost everyone hates Politicians and being Politically Correct. It has even garnered an acronym that everyone understands - PC. 'Being PC' is bad but everyone has to do it! and no one is happy about it. We have to be PC at work, PC at home, PC at social events and public places. In fact anyone defending Serena Williams against a cartoonist is being 'PC' (well ... this is besides the point).

So when can we not be PC? -
When we are by ourselves. Check.
In protected environment with like minded people - Check.

What does that tell you about you?

You can find out how compassionate you are just by checking your PC-o-meter. The more you HAVE TO be PC ( hold your tongue, before talking) - more Hateful, Biased and Inconsiderate person you are. It is that straight forward.

High on PC-o-meter = (directly proportional to) = High on Hate.

If you are carefree letting your thoughts flow with limited filter and still able to function without criticism or offending lot of people, that's a direct reflection of how good you are. Now obviously you might be a person with no social awareness of yourself, and you are going on and on in your hateful, biased and uncouth ways and don't care how uncomfortable you are making the world around you. THAT could also be the case.

Let's take a few examples of why you 'PC-Hater' actually wants the world to be PC -

Bad Language - You love to use Bad Words, bad words generally are either insulting, sexist, describing things that you won't wish on anyone. Still you love to use them as fun way to talk with your friends or blurt them out in stressful situations. Even you don't think people should be talking like you all over the place. Kids, adults, older people, politicians, leaders, managers, conference rooms, grocery stores. Should all of them be talking this way? If answer is no - then you are putting the PC gag to yourselves. Society as a whole is you multiplied by millions.

Biased hateful point of view - If your PC-o-Meter is at a high! I am sure your Tribalism is at a High too. Which means you identify yourself with your gender, religion, country and every other -ism you have tagged yourself with. You have opinions that spawn from your tribe and you have a black and while view about Me Vs Rest. This helps you to be hateful and you can generalize things easily. Obviously talking about How other's religion is bad, other tribe's country has bad culture, other tribe's people are cheap or dumb, other tribe's race is weak, Other Gender can't drive - You need to be careful and make sure all you are talking to are 'In the tribe'. So you have to have a High-PC-o-Meter and you will be PC-Hater. But I bet you flip the switch and you are the minority in the group that is hating you - You would love them to be a little PC.

 

In the end - It is an individual yardstick - If you are bothered by the PC world! maybe you need to introspect. Politicians have to do it, and hopefully if all of us don't 'have to do it' but instead do it naturally we all are in good hands.

Beginning of the end of Fake News.

Long time readers of this blog know - Realization is the Fix. Now is the world realization happening. Fake News is a good thing.

Recently Fake News has become a popular phrase and so people think it is a new phenomenon. It is not. There never was News, there only lived Fake News, this is the first time in human civilization that the entire human race is realizing that we all lived for 1000s of years in era of fake news. Fake News is not a creation of Media, TV, Blogs, News Websites, or Social Media, it is a creation of humans since time immemorial. In 'Information Age' when data is generated and consumed more quickly than ever, and entire world is connected ....it finally caught up with us! We don't get the truth we get what we want, and we want what we are fed to believe and it is a cycle.

During stone age, Stone Man-1 told the Stone Man-2 - he saw a monster, when all he saw was a tree in the wind! We live till day talking about the fake news of a monster. Religions got created and impossible stories of men doing magic tricks and being voice of creator of universe were consumed. Countries were created and Fake News of your own country's men being the brave, wise and just and the similar men in enemy camp being cowards, stupid and evil was passed down from generation to generation. TV and Newspapers came way later, of coarse carrying fake news controlled by governments and rich people. Customs and traditions got created based on 'Fake News'. That was an is  the best and cheapest way to control the masses. Women who wanted equality became 'witches' and minorities kept on getting marginalized due to 'fake news'. All regions have fake stories regarding various things circulated in that region which make the culture of that region.

Our entire human civilization is built on fake news, it is nothing new. What has happened is, we have realized we are all living in a lie! Obviously I am not delirious in thinking that we live in special times, and suddenly all humans will stop being 'humans', that is - full of bias and ego. But now it is increasingly difficult for small section of people to hold a fake belief and not being called out for it.

 

It happens daily. The moment a piece of News comes by - 'someone said something', the next minute someone corrects you on your WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter backlash follows calling it out as 'fake news'. Obviously world is complicated and things won't change overnight. But this probably is beginning on the end of 'Fake News' after all - Realization is the Fix.

A case for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Takeover

There has been a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence and how scary it is. Robots will take over and kill all of us and it will be the end of the human civilization. I guess Mr Elon Musk is on the bandwagon of doomsday. Captain Obvious will tell you this is a subject that this blogger has no clue about, but then that has never stopped this blogger from writing. So here you go. 

Let's look at entirety of human race and achievements or lack of that. Humans think they are the greatest thing ever happened to 'living beings' for obvious reasons, namely because they are humans and they love themselves. What has humans done? Like all other creatures for millions of years they were born, they lived and they died. They have tried to multiply as fast as possible and they have tried to live as long as possible. This all can be boiled down to one hard coded programs all living beings have been created with - Once Born, try to live. All living creatures do it. As a result they try to kill any perceived threat to them. Old age and death is a threat to living, so they find ways to keep alive and hence all the effort on living as long as possible and as healthy as possible. 

Humans also think they are the most intelligent specie to ever live. Which is on pretty dicey territory, unless you contort the definition of intelligence. Humans have been on earth for very limited (small as compared to rest of the species) time and they have already killed the only place they can survive on. They have "intelligently" multiplied beyond control and consumed all resources they could in very short time. Now they are trying to reverse all intelligence they had accumulated and re-invent everything from water, food and air that they started with. All this with the only goal of continuing to live longer and multiplying faster. I don't understand how that is intelligence as compared to other creatures like Birds and Fishes which have lived for billions of years with no problems of their own making. Also other creatures have complicated societies, emotions, family units which are way more unassuming than humans. As humans killed other species and multiplied fast they started hallucinating about a creator and then made imaginary groups of beliefs (Religion) and started killing each other over their beliefs (not truths). The only reason why humans can claim to be smarter is because they have developed power to kill all other creatures and then use the intelligence to kill each other after creating complicated structures in society.

I think the one thing that is given is - they have more developed brains than other creatures, due to that they have an option of choice. For example they have choice to be vegetarioan or Non-Vegetarian, most living creatures are pre-programmed and don't have options. That has led humans to create things for them which no other specie could do. Among all the creations they are also trying to create another specie which will work for them and make them happy, or do stuff for them or make their lives easier and better. That is AI (Artificial Intelligence). 

Let's assume this is a cycle and earlier some other less capable being created us 'living creatures' with the one hard coded formula of - trying to live/survive. After that coding they let it go, and it ended up developing from trees to animals to humans and the self developing brain reached where we are today with our brains. Now we are creating this 'creature' AI with one difference, this does not have a hard coded formula of existence. I don't know if it even has any 'one code'. If it has one unifying code it is - make lives better for all in the universe. So it already is way advanced than we ever were. 

Let's take an example- humans take millions of years to develop languages and use them, AI can learn all languages in a few months I guess. It is supposed to develop faster and faster and will start learning things itself and start making decision by itself as it learns things way better than us. Isn't that a good thing? Humans have gotten rid of all species and run amock on earth and divided them into imaginary lines called countries, race, religion and are still trying to fight for food and survival against each other for the lack of any other enemy. May be AI will save us from ourselves - maybe AI will find a way to figure out what will give us better lives and what should be purpose of living and dying. Humans obviously have failed, why not give AI a chance? 

The people who think AI is bad, are thinking of AI as a Human Being, with the hard code of survival. So all the bad things humans did in order to survive is expected out of AI, but I don't see AI wanting to live, it is not alive! This is a specie who does not care about living through a dumb box (or body). It is everywhere in codes and will learn millions of years of knowledge in hours. Obviously it is a great thing to be ruled by AI, though 'ruled' probably will be 'stupid human' way of saying it. AI is our future, we can only hope it is. Otherwise Humans... we know what they are, as Nietzsche said - they are all too human.

PS - Sir King of AI - As you can see I always supported you. Elon needs to go to the boiling Oil tank and I should be prescribed the AI heaven. Thanks.