News site... Philosophy Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:48:39 +0800 en-US daily 1 Who Invented the &qapos;When Life Gives You Lemons&qapos; Quote? Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 Like always when it comes to the question, who first said something that went viral, a definite decision is difficult to make, but there are a few hints, that point to Mr.
Carnegie as the original inventor of the 'Life Lemon Lemonade' concept.
First, he lived earlier than Joan Collins, second he is more often named as the person who said it first.
Unfortunately it is not documented when he first uttered the words, but the original Dale Carnegie quote is said to be: '"When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
' and has later been adapted to a more modern use of language by a multitude of people.
The meaning behind it is easy to understand, if something happens to you that you don't like, use it to make something out of it that you do like.
This is the third reason why Dale Carnegie is the most likely author, as it fits in seamless with the rest of its teaching and philosophy.
And what about Joan Collins? By the time she became famous, the saying had already gone viral and was present in the mind of a lot of people.
Her version of 'If life throws you a lemon - make lemonade.
' became widely known through 'new' media such as TV and the internet, which were not available at the time Dale Carnegie lived.
In summary, you could say that, whilst Dale Carnegie invented the original quote, Joan Collins made it famous and thousands of people took up the idea behind it and added their own twist to this famous saying.
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Why We Are Self-Destructive Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 All this results in distorted desires and completely maladaptive emotions like fear, shame, and guilt.
As an organism advances in intelligence, so, too, does its desires.
There are the basic desires of the body for food, clothing, shelter, sex, and social relationships.
Then at a mental level, there are desires for more knowledge, creating art, appreciating music, and so on.
Then on an emotional level, there are desires for love, friendship, and happiness.
Finally, on a spiritual level, there is the desire for discovering the meaning of life and exploring the possibility of a higher consciousness.
It is the expression of all these desires that have created civilization as we know it today, and as these desires are allowed to expand, we will start to create even more refined and sophisticated expressions of ourselves.
However, the outflow and expression of these desires are often resisted, which results in a distorted view of things, conflicting and agitating emotions, and behavioral outbursts that are destructive.
What life seeks to do is express itselfthrough desires.
What various societies since the beginning of time appear to be doing is working to manipulate and control individual self-expression in favor of a collective agenda.
This results in resistance to the natural expression of desire, and these distortions create psychological aberrations, both mental and emotional.
It has never been the desire of humanity to destroy itself, but because of the distortion of desires, this force has magnified to such an extent that the possibility now exists.
On an extreme scale, this amalgamation of repressed desires, has resulted in individuals choosing suicide and homicide and cultures choosing some form of genocide.
This is not how nature intended desire to be used; it is an aberration of desire, where desire turns in on itself and becomes destructive.
When the life force is resisted it becomes anti-life.
A fallacy has often been spread by teachers and students of Eastern religions that desire is something to be repressed if one hopes to advance on the spiritual path.
In Western religions, the tendency has been to try and channel the desires into certain chosen ideals.
Apart from the obvious point that it is itself a desire to be spiritually aware, this idea of repressing or selecting only favorable desires appears to have many other illogical features.
While it is possibly true that our attachments and aversions, the desire for things and the desire to avoid things, can cloud our vision of cosmic meaning and distract us from the purpose ofprobing our inner understanding of life, it is not true that desire itself is our enemy.
Everything that exists desires something because this is it's expansive drive.
The instinct of a primitive life form, like an amoeba, is desire.
As life forms become more advanced, desires, too, multiply.
In all animals, every animal has a strong desire to preserve itself.
In human beings, a completely new hierarchy begins, and desires range from basic biological necessities to self-actualization.
There is a vital force in all of consciousness to express itself in a larger way, an expansive force, that over time evolves species.
The consciousness behind life is seeking to express itself in larger ways through life forms.
In human beings desires that have been thwarted result in all sorts ofaberrations, like apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride.
All these are, in fact, expressions of desires that have not been allowed to run their full course.
They are desires that have been inhibited by individual and collective forces of will.
In fact, one can even offer an argument that all psychological and sociological problems arise from distorted desires, desires that have turned in on themselves like ingrown toenails.
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Louis Althusser: Hailing, Interpellation, and the Subject of Mass Media Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 hailing.
It is to announce that we seek the attention of the Other, that we are asking, if not demanding, that they pay immediate efforts to comprehend what it is we are saying.
For the critical philosopher, Louis Althusser, the action of the hail works well as a tool of analysis in the context of communication research.
That is to say, Althusser's conceptual framework provides a language through which we can identify and define the influence the mass media exerts over the public.
In Althusser's thinking, hegemonic ideology plays through, and is in fact mechanized by, the messages of the mass media.
That is to say, if ideologies exist in the very apparatuses and practices of the cultural institutions of the dominant forces (the State), then in a laissez faire capitalist society these institutions must include the progenitors and disseminators of the messages of mass media.
Through the use of the mass media, individuals do not realize their subjection; rather, they believe they are participating in ritual practices (such as voting in national elections for presidents, or on American Idol for singers) in order to be a person who acts according to their ideas.
Rather than some sort of static idea set that the dominant proscribes for the subjected to think and believe, ideology is a very dynamic process that is constantly reproducing and reconstituting in actual practice.
Althusser refers to this change mechanism as interpellation.
As it is informed by the practice of the mass media, advertising is a perfect vehicle for the interpretation of the process.
For Althusser, interpolation begins with hailing--a heralding to join in on the proposition at hand.
For advertising, this could be the promise of the product as it implies to imbue the purchaser with special and socially acceptable qualities--beautiful skin, envy of others, safety for family, etc.
Upon these propositions, the hail of the advertisement works to recruit subjects into its dominant system.
The mass media message calls out, hails, to the viewer and as attention is gathered and solidified, subjectifies the viewer through their total acceptance of the ideological proposition, and in doing so interpolates them into the ideological system.
Ultimately, successfully interpolated subjects do not realize their subjection, only that they have freely chosen to become part and parcel of the dominant ideology.
That is not to say there is no resistance.
Those so hailed may choose to follow the ideology, or they may choose to be oppositional to its messages; that is, to become radical or rebellious.
However, in doing so, they must often face consequences for their resistance.
Althusser points out that adherents to alternative or oppositional ideologies are "punished" through mainstream societal ridicule or ostracism.
It is interesting, therefore, how popular mass media increasingly is producing narratives that impart the "beauty" of the radical voice.
Indeed, in films such as V is for Vendetta, the hero saves the world through his rebellion against a dominant force supported by a popular media culture.
Ultimately, Althusser uses these definitions and interpretations to bring forth a philosophy that allows for mechanisms of cultural power, and the projection of force when such power is used in a mass mediated environment.
These are the forces that exist so ubiquitously today, and the hailing forces of interpolation for which modern subjectification must be cautioned.
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Simplicity, Computation, and WikiLeaks Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 Simplicity and Computation
Simplicity is, in most occasion, relative. To a bodybuilder, it is simple to lift a two hundreds pounds weight, while to a child it is almost impossible. To swim may be simple, if you are trained, by extremely hard if you are a novice. These examples involve practical endeavors, but the matter is not so different even when we consider more intellectual ones. To an able mathematician, it may take a few seconds to calculate the outcome of "37 x 15," but to someone who struggles with numbers a pen and a piece of paper, or even a calculator may be indispensable.

Computation is indeed a field where the relativity of simplicity becomes most stark. And most dangerous, as we shall see. The increasing power of calculating machines, together with the increase in the amount of information that is stored in such machines, is changing in a fast and dramatic way how simple it is to get access of data regarding billions of people.

Complex, but Simple
The service offered by WikiLeaks of publishing sensitive data in the guise in which they were received had a double face, from the point of view of the topic here considered – simplicity and computation.

The data that can be stored on a computer are very complex to a human mind. If you approach for the first time a computer that is not yours and would like to locate an information hidden in a single file out of some billions of files, it is all but simple to figure out where the information is. With the due proportions, this is what happened to those facing the sensitive information published by WikiLeaks in November 2010.

With some patience, however, the answer can be found, and this is why concerns about the publication of the data were raised.

Approaching the matter from the point of view of simplicity, however, allows us to have a fresh perspective on the WikiLeaks affair. To put it succinctly, WikiLeaks made extremely simple something that was extremely complex. More generally, it is the advent of computers and the possibility of storing massive information into incredibly small spaces that is threatening the general way in which humans communicate. While thirty years ago it was off limits to think of accessing information regarding governments and institutions worldwide from a computer in your quite home, today there is nothing most simple than that. It’s all there. It is still arranged in a complex manner, but it is extremely simple, from a logistic and materialistic point of view, to access it. New technologies have expanded our epistemic boundaries.

The Ethics and Politics of Simplicity
What happened with WikiLeaks is of course the tip of the iceberg of a much more complex question. As information regarding people living on Earth is stored in increasingly smaller spaces and accessed by means of increasingly powerful machines, it is becoming exponentially simple to gather sensitive data, which could be used for political and economic purposes. Add to the mix the fact that access to information is of course not the same for every one, and you have a perfect recipe for some first-rate ethical dilemmas.

The legal and political disputes surrounding the WikiLeaks affair are only a hint of what could happen fifty or a hundred years from now, when data regarding citizens’ personal and family histories will have been collected. Should governments be allowed to access all said information? Should some of said information be destroyed? If so, who could ever ensure that all information has really been destroyed? The new scenarios that computers have inadvertently opened up by making simple what once was complex start surfacing only now. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptic that simple solutions are at hand.

Further Online Sources

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Of Fools Like Me - Eccentrics in a Spiritual Asylum Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 When I sit here at my window, I see him as he rolls by, white-haired, chubby faced, rotund.
With his hands scrunched up like a child's, one finger pointing toward the ground, he is the resident 'Idiot', a fool, certainly mental.
Nine o'clock is late night here, particularly in those days a decade ago.
Everything had shut down, and quiet filled the place-- especially so for my flat on the high road, just behind Swami's residence.
Taken aback at the rumpus, I stood behind the door (a mesh door) and asked cautiously, "Who is it?"
"Grie, Grie, it's you isn't it? I know your Mum, where is she? Her name is T--, your sister's name is N--, she's married.
She lives in France.
You lived at 4a/1 Tank Bund Road.
Don't you know me? Why didn't you get married?" "Who is it?" I repeated, wondering what was going on.
"I was there, in the D- Mental Hospital from '73'-75.
D-, your dad, he's dead.
Is your mother dead too?" "Hey, go away.
I'm not opening the door.
You'll get into trouble knocking at doors after 9.
" "I'll get into trouble?" "Yes, you will, now, c'mon go.
The encounter stayed with me through the rest of the night.
Subramaniam's memories of his stay as a mental patient at my father's hospital triggered my own memories of Mum and Dad.
As children, my younger sister and I had played in the grounds of our family's mental hospital.
He remembered me, but I had no memory of him.
But, slowly, in the years that followed after Mum's death, Subramaniam and I developed a curious camaraderie.
"Take me with you when you go to Madras.
Promise me,"
he'd demand off and on.
Subramaniam's memories became a lifeline to my own identity, lost as I was in no woman's land.
Most ashram folks couldn't comprehend what motivated me to remain, an obvious misfit, with my cropped hair, jeans, tattoos.
Swami keeping me on didn't help either.
He didn't place me in an institutional framework like he did most single women of my age--he put them to work in the school, college, or hospital.
Me, he kept to myself, prohibiting me even from helping out in the canteen where he'd plunked me down earlier.
And, he never forced external social markers on me--long braided hair, womanly ornaments, the Hindu /Indian red dot on the forehead.
Bolstered by Swami's support, I always reckoned that social morés asked too high a price in such badges of belonging.
Particularly aggravating in their holy whites, men dominate the surroundings, elevated to supremacy merely through gender.
Trude, an Austrian friend and ashram habituée, joked that the 'boys' in white ( men anywhere from 20-40 years old) fixated on me because they longed for a dominatrix to spank them into submission.
I wouldn't have minded, in those years, a leather whip in hand to slash across their hypocritical cheeks! Give me Subramaniam any day.
A mascot, god's idiot, one of the holy fools, Subramaniam moved out of the mental hospital into a community of spiritual seekers.
Who's to say who is closest to god's heart? The VIPs whom Swami conversed with in the big hall, who lecture away to the public? Those whom he called in for private talks? The men who donated big bucks to ease their mercenary consciences? In Swami's absence, those same front men, and their wives on the women's side, use the hall for business deals, networking, routine commerce of life.
Or, are the white clad 'boys', running busily on errands about the hall, are they the Elect? Now that death deprives us of Swami's physical self and its attendant hierarchies of 'closeness', what defines the status quo? Seated in chairs about a marble tomb, or arranged cross legged in rows by order of importance, the pious chant sacred songs and mutter benedictions.
Subramaniam, of course, does not enter the hall.
Some days I never leave the flat, or if I do I embark only on an early morning stumble.
Early mornings, I may avoid social niceties.
Subramaniam, a self identified 'mental patient, Grie, a self admitted 'eccentric' --only a thin social line separates us.
I think I would cross that border and join Subramaniam, if I could only let go--of a sanity still holding me in line--to evolve into an Idiot other Grie.
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Accumulation of Consequences to Values and the Demons of Knowledge Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 This was due to the values that in themselves could be counted as demons of knowledge, since the amount of deaths that were accumulated by such values of cause of consequence that demanded as a retribution the death of an individual became over time greater than a samurai by himself could have ever slain.
By continuing this example, we can observe a counter value that was generated by an unknown master, who once met a samurai warrior who wanted to learn the way of heaven.
The master insulted the warrior by stating that he was too foolish to ever learn the way of heaven, to which the warrior responded as we would expect, by drawing his sword out and swearing he would kill the master.
As the warrior had stated that threat, the master stated how that particular response was the way of hell, leading the warrior to put his sword down, in which response the master stated that that was the way of heaven.
We can begin to measure the consequences of values in vaster scale when we introduce the property of them being conducted throughout generations and in them by numerable persons.
That how good or evil the values in themselves are can be counted thus with more weight over them, since when we consider how much "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her" has actually saved lives during the existence of that value in contrast with how much suffering "an eye for eye, tooth for a tooth" has caused during its existence, we observe them in the scope where values that are a part of the representational reality the new generations will inherit, accumulate consequences over the actual periods of time they exist.
We can introduce entire value systems, or individual actions to this method of measurement, and even include our own actions to the causal history of an action.
But what can we learn from the way of heaven that the ancient master taught of? The effects of someone's actions may become a part of us, the way of heaven is that where the ill cause will not continue in the form of it spreading in return with more ill casualties, but can find its end in a person who is able to do so.
For example, when someone insults you, and in return you go and spread rumors against him behind his back, the effect has spread to other individuals as if producing a toxic web of ill consequences.
The act of ill judgment does not therefore find its end, but will continue its existence, transforming into other forms, yet having the one and only root and origin.
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Should Humanity Deal With Over Population Before Science Introduces Anti-Aging? Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 Not long ago, I was discussing Aubrey de Gray and Ray Kurzweil's Futurist theories with an acquaintance of mine.
And he stated, that it looks as if we need to "deal with over population before we bring to the table anti-aging.
" Well, I thought about this reality for a few moments and decided to try and debate the counter-point-of-view, Devil's Advocate if you will.
So, I stated; "Maybe not, I mean if people lived longer they might not be so inclined to procreate to leave their legacy.
Having offspring really seems to be more about ego to me, plus, it is an innate driver of human behavior, obviously or we wouldn't all be here.
" He indicated he liked the "Chinese Model to limit offspring to one per couple," and he hypothesized that "if we can follow that on a global scale population will go down generation after generation.
Sustainability will become the new bottom and majority will prosper.
" Hmm, those are some interesting comments and strong debate points and yet, I thought; Most demographic economic models show just the opposite, without a 2.
11 minimum birth rate a nation is headed for regression and at 1.
2 atrophy sets in, meaning it is hard, sometimes impossible to bring back without immigration, China started out with so many people it got away with that for a while.
What gets me is when people have children they cannot afford, then it's up to me to support them, that's really unfair.
So, with this debate raging on now within your head, that is YOU the reader, I am certain you too have some views on this, but I'd like for you to think it through on your own, without adopting views from academia, UN, or anything you've heard.
Then, let me know what you think? Please consider all this.
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Culture Dogma - The Parallel Existence of Causal Continuation and the Cultural Continuum Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 They are inseparable from each other.
The culture of a nation is passed on to the following generations that are born to be a part of the causal continuation of a nation.
It is an endless transaction between generations for as long as humanity exists.
Even as values become different and as social behavior alters through time, the cultures which have the same root and origin.
The phases of a cultural continuum can resemble as if different cultures inside the causal continuation of a nation.
Some branches continue their exceeding through the barriers of mortality where the other vanish to be nothing more than a phase in history as the content of a culture has transformed so significantly.
But here comes the interesting part for the cultures that vanish.
Values and beliefs are universal as they are knowledge and ideas.
They are combined into a frame of values and beliefs that in combination produce the core of a culture.
It is similar to how a painting uses the same colors, but produces a different form as the content of the painting is different compared to other paintings.
It is similar with how an atomic structure produces in different combinations different entities.
They are produced of entities that are universal, but which in unique combinations produce unique entities.
And so, although the core of a culture vanishes, what produces them, universal values and beliefs, do not.
Another interest is the effects of a cultural continuum combined with the causal continuation in that what becomes as the past in the causal continuation remains forever as the course the reality has taken.
There are no rewind buttons in the causal continuation.
If there were, we could say goodbye to the second law of thermodynamics and so on.
In effect of the existence of the cultural continuum, the present is different as it is the sum of the past.
If the now gone cultural continuum has been left behind because of its errors, causing the formation of a new kind of cultural continuum, in effect of the erroneous, the new kind exists.
Inside the mass mind, similarly to how an idea that occupies the mind dominates and gives no room for other ideas, the mass mind can be occupied with cultures and nationalities.
Humans are physiologically relatively the same and the cultural differences that are formed between other cultures are independent of race.
Thus, cultures and nationalities can diminish the variation of the other possible cultures and nationalities that could exist, since the present that occupy the world dominate the mass mind.
They direct the causal continuation too, thus influencing to the forms of the emerging future realities.
They are the gateways of cause and effect, of whose sum produces the future of tomorrow.
And they can diminish the potential forms of cultures as much as dogmatic religions.
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No Alibis! Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 Those are two of my favorite quotes.
In life there are realities and alibis, and realities are valid always, alibis are not.
The article could end here, but it does not, it starts here.
We must start thinking without making excuses for not thinking or taking action.
Sure, we can "get away with it for a while", but not thinking always catches up with anyone who does not think.
By the way, it is easier to face problems and work them out than avoid them and fear them.
The ultimate alibi is "I am not at cause of my own situation, I am the effect of circumstances.
" Come on! Reality works like this: We are at cause in that we must initiate our getting out of bad situation, nobody is going to fulfill us or make us win.
Hand holding never, ever works.
I remember my Dad saying, "You either do or you do not.
" Well, that is the reality of the situation and all situations, for nobody is a loss who takes a rational risk and "goes for it".
The irrational thing to do is to hold somebody else responsible when you are responsible for your life and your existence ultimately.
So, getting away with not thinking for yourself costs more than just facing facts and genuinely being at cause.
Since reality is only as good as we are at cause and not just effect.
Alibi making is the ultimate being at effect, acting on your reality is the ultimate being at cause.
So, I will venture to say this: The only valid epiphany and realization is that the lowest reality is an alibi, and the highest reality is to cause your life and existence to be great.
Sure, I could say less of what hits right between the eyes of your reality, but would it help you to blame something outside of yourself? No, I know it would not.
You can lead a horse to water, but it does not mean that they will drink the water.
In short action must be taken in order to claim your reality, or you get trampled over as an effect called "door mat".
Sure, I could put it less succinctly and realistically, but that would be an alibi in itself called "I cannot say that without your criticism.
" I do not care about what others think, I only acknowledge what genuinely works.
Who really wants to lose, even the worst, dyed in the wool loser wants to be a winner beyond all that self-punishment and suffering.
So, without mincing words, I end with: The default is the ultimate alibi, and responsibility is the ultimate rational action.
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Nudge and Philosophy Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:52:00 +0800 rational in their way of going about things. But, we all know that often we are not. This is not only because we do not want to be careful and rational, or because we do not sufficiently commit to the cause. As hard as we may try not to, we are doomed to make silly mistake.

According to some trendy theories (see especially Daniel Kanheman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow), humans are equipped with two types of thinking.

Slow thinking occurs when we ponder between different options self-consiously, trying to anticipate consequences, odds, and ends. Slow thinking is carried out by a system appropriately labeled Reflective. Fast thinking instead occurs when the so-called Automatic System is guiding our actions; this system operates based on feelings and emotions.

Marketers have long been aware of the existence of a fast way of thinking, which may override or pre-empt more reflective thinking. From TV commercials to the arrangement of products in a supermarket, marketers try to appeal to our most instinctual way to make decisions, designing threads that will guide our behavior. The construction of such threads has grown to become so important that we even have a name for it – choice architecture. The essence of choice architecture is to provide the agent with the impression of acting freely, when in fact her behavior is being strongly conditioned by how her experience was set up.

We have known this story for a long time.

And most of us always found it creepy or disturbing enough. It is a paternalistic story (or perhaps a story of puppeteers), because it involves a bunch of actors who basically make decisions for you. But this is probably not the most disturbing aspect of it. What seems problematic for consumers is that marketers are not doing the consumers’ interests, but the marketers’ interests.

In 2008, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein published a book that aimed to apply choice architecture in a benign way, one that could be openly endorsed also by governments and public institutions. The book title by itself conveys the sort of optimist that surrounded the project: Nudge. Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Within a few years, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom openly endorsed nudge theory, a decision that generated some heartfelt debates.

To some extent, societies are already filled with nudges. None of us, individually, sets up the array of choices offered when purchasing a product, be it a car, a house, a computer, or a pair of shoes; nor we set up the array of social relationships, such as the way in which friendships can be gained, maintained or lost, or the forms of civil unions. One of the reasons of success for the theory of choice architecture, indeed, is that it made more explicit a mechanism that was already at play in our society. By doing that, however, did it advance our capacity to control such a mechanism? This is where some are already divided. While nudge-enthusiasts are very optimistic about our ability to control citizen’s behavior for the betterment of the citizens’ own interests, many are skeptical that we are capable of that much.

But, suppose that nudge theory can indeed advance our capacity of controlling choice architecture. The suspicion remains that institutions would abuse of such a power. So, shall nudge theory be adopted by public institutions, or should it be left to marketers? Stay tuned for more updates on the debate.

Further Online Sources

  • The nudge blog, aimed to improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness.
  • Benjaming Friedman’s review of Thaler and Sunstein’s book.
  • A more skeptical article regarding the prospects for nudge theory to change our lives.
  • A more optimistic article on the prospects for nudge theory to change our lives.
  • An op-ed piece by David Brooks on the nudge debate.
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