Category Archives: human mind

Why some people are happier

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I am happy to be alive! says Pollyanna, in the anime “Ai Shoujo Pollyanna Story” (Love Girl Pollyanna Story). You have probably heard about Pollyanna, it is almost a common noun in English. But is a Pollyanna born or made?

My one courageous commenter asks me what I believe is the reason why some people are happier than others. This is a main interest of mine – after all, almost all westerners want to be happy – and I have written about it occasionally for years. This seems like a good time to present my current view, which has developed a bit over time.

1) Genetic foundation for happiness.  Whether you call it evolution or intelligent design, you have the same dilemma: Humans know about their mortality, and if they really want to, they can kill themselves. Therefore, there are limits to how much depression you can pile up on them before they quit. Conversely, if people tend toward extreme happiness, they don’t invest a lot of thought and energy in improving their situation. In the extreme case, this could threaten their life, as in not gathering food for the winter.  Before it gets that far, they are anyway unlikely to procreate, since they are happy without sex.

So basically, there is a range of possible happiness that will let you survive and reproduce. If your genes take you outside those limits, those genes are lost.

Modern society has widened that range, since depressed people can now be medicated, and people who live without concern can get food for free.

2) Physiological changes. Conditions in early childhood can change a person’s capacity for happiness, as well as for other emotions. Malnutrition is an example, but physical abuse in childhood and low levels of contact can also cause the brain to not develop to its potential.

3) Psychological conditions. Apart from the physical changes to the brain from extreme life conditions, there are the “software” changes to the growing mind from various experiences in childhood, and to some extent even later. A good childhood may not save you from a depression that comes from brain chemistry gone wrong, but it will push you toward the upper reaches of happiness if you’re average at the outset.

4) Lifestyle. Poor people are less happy than others, but rich people are not much happier than ordinary workers, and the middle class does not become happier as it becomes richer. Once you have the basics – I have seen the phrase “$10 000 a year” bandied around, but I suppose this will change as the dollar falls – other things than money count more.

The employed are happier than the unemployed, even adjusted for the income. (In some European countries, the difference is not all that huge. If you have several children, you can earn more by being unemployed.)

Married men are happier than unwed men, with divorced men the least happy of all. Married women are happier than unmarried women, on average, but unlike the men women often become happier after divorce.  Having children does not at all add to a couple’s happiness, actually it detracts just a little, but losing them causes great unhappiness, whether it is to death or separation. People who have many different sex partners are less happy than those who have one, but happier than the involuntarily celibate.

People who have many friends are happier than people who have few friends, but it is a diminishing return. Having no friends or very few is bad, but the difference from 30 to 300 is not all that great. Still, every little Facebook friend adds to your happiness.  There is a reason for this, but I don’t remember if I have written about it.

5) Choices. While you can not always choose to be employed or married, you can usually choose whether or not to read. People who read a lot of books are happier than those who don’t. Both quantity and quality of the literature seems to have an effect here.

Religious people are generally happier than others, with Buddhists seemingly the happiest of the bunch. Among the religious, attendance at church / synagogue / temple etc is a pretty good indicator of happiness and also of longevity, if other things are equal.

People who meditate are happier than people who don’t meditate. This is the case even if they don’t attend a temple or profess any particular religion.

People who are physically active, especially outdoors, are happier than those who just sit there. This may conflict with the part about books, but it helps to not have a TV. People who don’t have a TV are happier than those who have. TV is particularly bad for married people.  There is a reason for this too.

Optimists are happier than pessimists. People who force themselves to smile become happier than those who don’t. People who keep track of their blessings and of the good things that are done to them become rapidly happier, people who keep track of bad things that happen to them and especially injustice done against them become rapidly unhappy. These are things you can partly do something about, by keeping a gratitude diary etc.

But the single greatest source of happiness is the decision to make others happy. Those who each day look for opportunities to be of help to others, without asking for anything in return, are certain to become happier over time, and their happiness is a lasting one. On this both religion and science agree.

There are some things that could have been added, but I think this alone is enough. There is definitely a trend in it, and I hope you see this. Even if you are dealt bad cards at the start of your life, there will be many chances to throw away a card and pull a new and better. So no matter who you are, you can eventually have a winning hand, having achieved lasting happiness in this life on Earth.

***

I must admit that it was largely by accident I became as happy as I am now. I made some right choices, but I did not do so because I knew this would bring me happiness. On the contrary, it was my surprise at my own happiness that caused me to start looking into the science of human happiness.  But if I can help someone, anyone, choose the path to happiness on purpose, I would delight in doing so. The more happy people in the world, the better!

Human memory limits

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The details in the face are based on common Japanese characters. That is not a very effective way of remembering faces, I suspect.

Human recall is far more limited than we usually think. There are variations, which roughly follow IQ, and a few puzzling exceptions. But overall, most of us can only recall a few tens of thousands of facts, and this does not change after we are grown up, until illness damages the brain. So while you learn something new, you forget something old. (OK, you would probably forget something old even if you learned nothing new, but there is a diminishing return at least.)

Why does it not look that way? I will highlight two reasons why we can and should keep learning anyway:

1) Recall vs recognize.

While there are fairly narrow limits to what we can recall, we can recognize much, much more. A great example is the difference between active and passive vocabulary. An ordinary person uses only a few thousand words over and over. If you record everything they say over the course of a week, it will increase only slightly by expanding the time frame to a month. And if you record them again a year later, they still use the same few thousand words. The exceptions will be words that are used by others in the conversation, or that they have just read or heard in some source material they discuss. These words disappear out of the vocabulary again almost at once. In non-work English, 2000 words will cover over 95% of the speech! To not be outed as a foreigners, you will need at least 5000 though. (For instance, I would be outed as an alien if I started discussing female clothing in any great detail. Well, actually I am outed as an alien if I try to discuss these in my native Norwegian too, but you get the point.)

In contrast, even with just compulsory education you will be able to understand tens of thousands of words, without effort or particular talent. Just before Alzheimer’s sets in, you may well recognize 100 000 words if you are an office worker, even if you don’t work in education. The degree of recognition varies, but I personally would say you have a word in your passive vocabulary if you react when it is used in an incontrovertible way. (<– The word “incontrovertible” is wrong here. I used it as an example. It is completely meaningless in the sentence where I used it. Hopefully you noticed this immediately if you’re an English speaker, even if you did not know it means “unquestionable, agreed on, absolutely certain”.)

So, there are tens of thousands of words that you can recognize but don’t use. This is the case with other knowledge as well. If you’re older than 30 at least, you should jump a little in your seat if you hear someone say “We should not forget the 6 million Chinese who died in Hitler’s labor camps.” Even if you missed school that day and have no interest in history, some facts are used so frequently that they leak into your brain. (Incidentally, some of the commonly known facts are doubtful or just plain wrong, but generally not those that relate to Hitler.)

Because of this “passive knowledge” which keeps increasing faster and for longer than the “active knowledge”, learning is still worthwhile. But I will show you an even better way.

2) Layers of abstraction.

When we are babies, every experience is new, every observation is unique. But soon we master the noble art of generalization. For instance, all people have faces. (Insert joke about faceless bureaucrats as needed.) Chairs are chairs and not tables. Doggies and horsies are different from each other, but all of them are animals. As the years go by, we acquire more and more such generalizations, but they also get more and more precise.

The more we study a particular topic, the more we are able to generalize correctly, neither too little nor too much. Having precise generalizations saves a lot of “disk space” in our mind. We don’t need to keep a list of each case, or of each exception to the rule. We can handle these units without thinking much about them.

A related topic is mental pointers. (This is not a commonly used concept. I will explain what I mean by it.) For instance, the human short-term memory has a hard time remembering more than 7 units such as digits. Here in Norway, the phone operators are getting a nice little extra income after the phone numbers were changed from 3+5 digits (area code and number) to 8 digits. This is just a little more than the average person can hold longer than they can hold their breath, and so a lot of people dial the wrong number. Back in the old days, people usually only called within their own area and the couple nearest, and sometimes to an area where they had lived before or had family. They remembered the area code as 1 unit of information, which made it easy to remember long enough to dial.

To take another example, my birthday is December 27, which in Norwegian usage is written 2712. Therefore if I come across a phone number that is 27122712, I will instantly remember it for months or years, even if it has no other virtue. It is only 2 pieces of information to me, while to you it is 8.

A chess newbie will be happy to remember how each piece looks, what it is called, and what moves it can make. These three different types of information are stored as one unit in his memory. (Physically they are probably stored very differently, but they are retrieved in one unit. If you say “rook”, a chess player will immediately know roughly how it looks and what moves it can make.) You would think that a chess grandmaster must remember an inordinate amount of information, or else calculate his strategy anew each time. However, interviews have shown that these people think in a different way. They have pointers to far larger concepts, such as whole openings and endgames, which are stored in their long-term memory as one unit. When something similar comes up, even if it is not identical, they only need to remember that which is unique about the variant.

Well, that should be enough for now. I have passed a thousand words, which are like 993 more than you can remember. I hope this entry has been of some use to you, even though tomorrow you will not remember what it was you read today. Possibly not even that you visited this site at all.

Take this for a parting gift: If we cannot remember everything, then we should strive to remember the right things.

Hearts and dreams

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Want to know where your heart is? Watch where your mind goes when you daydream.

I approve of this meme, which goes around among friends and friends of friends on the Internet. After all, it is reasonably close to Jesus’ observation that “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” But it also is practical, so you have a harder time deceiving yourself.

This time, when I say “you”, I don’t mean “I”. I may still be able to deceive myself, because I don’t daydream, at least not in the usual sense.

I have come to understand that for neurotypicals, daydreams are involuntary and spontaneous. For me, creating and maintaining a daydream requires concentration, and lots of it.

If a daydream is something I initiate of my own free will, consciously,then it is probably not telling me much that I didn’t know already.

A better measure might be what I repeatedly think about throughout the day. Or even what I dream about in the night. Curiously, these two are not even remotely similar most of the time.

When my mind reboots after having concluded a train of thought (or resigned from it), it will typically soon go back to one of a few things:

-Strategies for the computer game I am playing that week.

-A novel in progress (the progress stops when I stop thinking about it).

-A topic to write about in one of my journals.

Actually that is pretty much it, since I write about almost anything.

Neither of these take up all that much time, however, since I am usually either at work, or sleeping, or in front of my computer. The notable irregular here is that I don’t think about work when I am not there, while I may think about the other two while I am out walking or sitting on the bus. Thus, my heart is at least not at work, for better or for worse.

My dreams, in contrast, are usually utterly alien.  I am in a different place, with different people, often a different name and a different family and work and friends, and sometimes different laws of nature.  It is exceedingly rare, if it has happened at all, that I wake up from a dream about doing my job, or playing a computer game, or writing.

The only thing I can remember that I both dream about and think about is sex, and that is not something I am unaware of.  There is usually a reason why I am reminded of it, and I notice immediately.  I don’t think it is important to get into details about this, since it does not noticeably impact my relationship to actual humans. But I do think about it from time to time, and I do dream about it from time to time.

I doubt my heart is in it though, anymore than it is in food when you starve. Those dreams will likely disappear with my body. Or so I fervently hope.

Still, I probably do have a heart. I just don’t know where I’ve hidden it.

Happinesses

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Once I see the pleased looks on everyone’s faces, I become happy as well. It is better than beer and Danish pastries!

I don’t remember if I came across Happy Science when I searched on Google for “happiness science”, but I know it was just around that time. Most people who look for such a thing are probably unhappy, so unhappy that they seek a change in their life. Certainly I read that this is a common reason for coming to Happy Science (the Japanese sect of that name).  For me, however, it was the opposite. I was wondering: Why am I so much happier than my friends and random people I meet?

These days, you can even read about people’s feelings on their blogs and “social media” like Facebook or Twitter. This has really brought home to me the fact that many people, perhaps most people, are unhappy. And not only evil people, but nice and friendly people who you would think fate would reward with joy in their hearts, even in the midst of the trials of life.

There are differences, of course.  The old are happier than the young, except for the very old who suffer massive breakdown of their bodies and brains. Married men and divorced women are all happier than unmarried men, with divorced men the unhappiest of all. The middle class is happier than the seriously poor, although happiness does not increase with money from there on up. Europeans are happier than Americans, and people in northern Europe more than those further south. The happiest of all are the Danes, but then again they start the day with a beer. I wonder if they would beat Norwegians if you could find enough sober Danes to run the survey on them… Well possibly. They have the pastry, after all!

And now I come to the point. For my search was not in vain. I believe I have learned what caused me to be bursting with joy most of the time when I am not sick and getting sicker.  No, it is not pastries, but we’ll get to them soon.

Ryuho Okawa may have pointed out something obvious, but I had never heard it before:  Happiness comes from having read many books, more specifically books by high spirits (great souls, geniuses in the classical sense). Having done this, high spirits in Heaven (or your subconscious) can draw near to you, and their being close brings happiness.

Note that I use the religious and psychological viewpoints interchangeably. True religion and true psychology are one, as there is only one truth if you go deep enough.  But often we cannot get all the way to the bottom, and then there will be different truths.

So your library is your doorway to years and years of happiness, a life overflowing with joy.  Or at least if you are like me or Ryuho Okawa when he was young.

Another interesting teaching of Happy Science is that humans exist at different spiritual levels, based on the number of dimensions they inhabit. This is eerily similar to the theory of Spiral Dynamics, but actually originated before it.  Unlike Spiral Dynamics, Happy Science uses religious imagery in explaining this.  You may find it easier or harder to understand that way, but let me briefly mention the main levels as seen by Happy Science.

The 4th dimension: Time.  All sane adults and children above the toddler age or so have access to time, in addition to the three dimensions of the material world.  They are aware that their body and their social relations change over the course of time.  A person whose highest aspiration lies within the four dimensions of space and time can be said to live on this level.  Such a person may aspire to physical fitness, or wealth, or popularity, or other things. But their aspiration does not go beyond the boundaries of the material world of space and time.

For a 4-dimensional person, happiness will consist in acquiring more of what they aspire for in this world.  This could be the pleasures of the senses, of which Danish pastries probably come in near the top along with chocolate and sex and any combination of these.  But it could also be some more lofty goal that is still within the domain of space and time.

The 5th dimension is spirituality, or objective goodness.  This is called the realm of the good, because good people go beyond “it is all about me” and begin to see themselves from outside.  By having your highest mind in the fifth dimension, in spirit, you are able to reflect on yourself, as if seeing yourself from outside. Those trapped in the fourth dimension cannot do this. So being able to reflect on yourself is a dramatic breakthrough.

Those who belong in the 5th dimension derive joy from gratitude. When they see the joy in other people’s faces, they become filled with joy themselves. This is an awesome thing!  A large portion of the human population, although probably no more than half, has come to this.  It should be encouraged, for it is still easy to sink down into the world of space and time. Advertising and political propaganda and even some modern education try to drag people down this way, and the joy of being happy together with others is lost.

Paradise, as we normally think of it, is a state of sharing pure-hearted joy with other people.  One must be without hate to enter paradise, and find joy in seeing other people happy. Those who feel joy in seeing others suffer will not last long in paradise even if they get in.

One should bear in mind that paradise is not a place, like another planet, but a state of mind.  We have to get there NOW while we are alive. But if you derive happiness from seeing the smiles of everyone, you are there already.

The 6th dimension is Truth. It is also called the Realm of Light.  Again, this is not some other planet or something, but a state of mind. Those who belong in this realm derive an intense pleasure from learning the Truth. I mean that in a most literal sense.  Their soul thirsts for insight in the same way a body may thirst for water if wandering through dry places for a long time.  To find it is pleasure that spreads from within to draw the body along with it, resonating in the pure joy. It is a feeling that is sensual only by resonance, the body resonating with the mind.  We who belong in this dimension with our highest aspiration go “Wheeee!” when we discover a new piece of truth.  Most true scientists obviously belong here.

The 7th dimension is altruism. This is the realm of saints and bodhisattvas, people who no longer care about themselves except for the good of all others. They eat to live, so they can be of service to others. They learn to become wise, to be of service to others. These no longer do good because the joy in other’s faces make them feel good. Even if they are misunderstood, even if their goodness is repaid with hate or scorn, they don’t falter.  They wish nothing for themselves, except the joy of love, which is the joy of giving.

There are hints of this life in the ordinary, for instance a mother will not throw out a baby who screams, but try to comfort him even if she does not feel like it. But these are just shadows. It is hard to imagine a life of pure giving, the life of a saint.  Even at my age, I only see this from a distance. I don’t really live that kind of life myself, and I wonder if I ever shall. Possibly, if I live long enough. But right now it is pretty distant.

So I won’t go any further than that.  As you see, there are different happinesses for different people.  For some, the greatest joy in life is to eat Danish pastries. For others, it is to be surrounded by happy friends who can laugh innocently together.  And for some of us, it is learning about the hidden things in nature of in the human mind. And then for a few, happiness is entirely outside themselves, in the act of giving unconditional love, or compassion.

(Note that you don’t really move from dimension to dimension, you add them. So even if reading the Wisdom of Solomon makes you want to dance with joy, that does not mean you suddenly dislike pastries, or beautiful music, or friendship. You add new and ever stronger sources of joy to what you have. You grow.)

There are actually different layers within each of these rough groups, of course. So there is a wide range of things that can cause happiness. Conversely, when people fail to live according to their highest aspiration (perhaps because society tells them they should seek something else), they become unhappy. And this is very common today.

Reflect on yourself, what is it that truly makes you happy?  What does this tell you about who you really are? It is still possible to change, while you are alive. But first you need to get to where your heart is, before you can start moving forward. Hopefully that does not mean a massive investment in Danish pastries and beer, or you would probably not have been able to read this entry.

Food consciousness

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Having a spare stomach for cake, dessert etc is actually quite common. How does this work?

What I reveal today is a truth that can change lives and even make life much longer and more enjoyable for many. Even if you don’t need it, bookmark this or save it, print it, and share it with a friend. Or better yet, understand it so deeply that you can tell them in your own words. But if not, printing is OK. In fact, I explicitly allow you to copy this to your own website.

Science tells us that only about 5% of those who lose weight through diets, actually keep the weight off. I hope these numbers are adjusted for those who in the meantime have taken up smoking, or got some chronic illness to their digestion, or changed to a physically demanding job. Because if not, the number would be around 0%.

Another scientific fact is as least as puzzling: Different diets give roughly the same results, even opposite diets. So if you pick a high-fat, low-carbs diet and your identical twin picks a low-fat high-carbs diet, you are likely to lose weight at around the same rate.

It gets better. One of the most effective “diets” has actually nothing to do with what you eat. Eating in front of a mirror is one of the surest ways to return to a healthy weight for those who are prone to overeating. A more time consuming but less insane looking alternative is a food diary, as detailed as possible, including all meals and all snacks. There is no need to restrain yourself, just make sure to never eat anything without writing it down.

A final piece of this puzzle: Studies show that people who eat in front of the computer or the TV (if it is on) eat about twice as much as if eating in the kitchen or dining room.

I actually had the privilege of seeing this in action when visiting a highly intelligent friend once. He devoured a bag of chips on front of the TV, and later that night accused his daughter of having taken it. Needless to say, this man lived a constant “battle of the bulge” over his belt.

But I have seen a much worse case. I worked for over a year at an institution for alcoholics. One of the patients had for some reason drunk methanol instead of ethanol some years earlier, and blown his long-term memory. He could hold a reasonably sane conversation, as he could remember the last minute or so. But what happened and hour ago was left to his imagination. This included any meals he had eaten and not just recently finished. So he would eat them again. Any attempts to convince him otherwise were ignored.

We imagine that the feeling of being fed comes from the physical pressure or weight of the food in our stomach, but this is only for the first minutes after a large meal. Pretty soon the contentment actually comes from the brain. The level of blood sugar does signal a recent meal, but that does not last long, and may soon turn worse than nothing. At that point, your subconscious uses your memory to determine how fed you are. This fact completes the puzzle. The picture is now clear.

The higher your “food consciousness”, the more precise your appetite.

In the past, food was a scarce resource. Eating was not something you did to while away the time, or because you had your hands free. Filling your stomach was an occasion of joy, and surrounded by ritual. Thanks were given to the spirits, all of the family was together (and in earlier times often the whole clan or village in case of a large feast). Everyone knew that eating your fill was not a basic human condition like breathing. It was something worthy of notice.

The human operation system still works the same way as in that not so distant past. But these days, food is often beneath notice. It is eaten alone while we read through the latest report from management. And so, like in the unfortunate alcoholic I mentioned, the meal never quite enters long-term memory.

When you start a new diet, you pay a lot of attention to your eating. By chance, you somewhat duplicate the conditions of the past, and your body and mind become aligned. But after a while the awareness fades, and your brain goes “What food? I don’t remember any food” and so you eat again.

Yes, there are certain illnesses that severely warp the metabolism and make a person prone to obesity (or the opposite). But they do not count in the tens of millions in one country alone! These things are more like people being born with fur or an unusual number of fingers. Diets are unlikely to have much influence in such a case, I fear. But for the normal human, raising food consciousness to its natural level is definitely worth a try.  Especially when the alternative so often is to live hungry or die early.

As a final note, I feel obliged to mention that the body is in any case a temporary dwelling, and we would be well advised to raise other forms of consciousness to a higher level than that of our food. But those who want to hear that can hear about it another day, or somewhere else. Take this for today.

What the Hell am I doing?

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“What do you think about this amount?” -I think it is eerily similar to my amount of superhero comics before I left the original Chaos Node.

I stopped by my comic book dealer (who also happens to be the used book store in Kristiansand). I fetched the two issues of Savage Dragon that were lying for me, and asked him to discontinue my subscription. I have quit the other comic book series as they closed down (and usually came back with a different name and different artists, but without me buying them). But this Larsen fellow just keeps ticking like the energizer bunny, it seems. So I gave up and told the shop to just cut it.

“I no longer see the point in reading about people bashing their heads with cars” I explained. “You should have realized that long ago” said the shopkeeper. “Why didn’t you read something more edifying?”

Why the Hell not? thought I, and as always when I use that phrase, I mean it in its religious sense. The shopkeeper continued talking about a local soccer hero who recently died at a fairly old age, and was praised by the local newspaper for soccer being his life until the very last. “Running after a ball is natural when you are a small kid, as long as it is just one of several games you play. But even then, something is wrong if soccer is all you play. And to keep being hung up on this for the rest of your life??”

Indeed. If some other person had been forced to spend his whole life doing nothing but soccer, seeing nothing but soccer, talking about nothing but soccer, wouldn’t he be in Hell? Not because soccer is omg so wrong, but because of the confinement and the stagnation – being essentially trapped in a small corner of a normal childhood for the rest of the life.

Ever since I read Ryuho Okawa’s view of Hell as something humans create rather than something God creates for them, it has seemed obvious to me that people are not actually thrown screaming and protesting into Hell by  hard-faced angels on the command of an angry God. Rather, Hell is something we gravitate toward. There is, so to speak, a mutual attraction between the sinner and his Hell.  Just recently I saw Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz imply something similar in his book The Thirteen Petalled Rose, and a quote from Jennifer Upton’s Dark Way to Paradise about Dante’s Divine Comedy also implying the same thing. Perhaps I am just selectively reading people who tell me what I want to hear, although this is a bit strange when I have not heard about them before. In any case, back to my comic books.

The difference between me and the soccer hero, apart from me not being a hero at all, is that I have only been partially imprisoned in a corner of my childhood.  I have tried to think about this. I have spent thousands on superhero comic books during my adult life, until my late 40es. Why the Hell did it not fall away before? It is after all not a biological urge… one can understand single men who buy porn (although I would think a couple porn mags should be enough for a lifetime, I mean, how many fetishes does one person have? – but what do I know.) Or even women who buy cook books. The body has its urges. But the urge to have cars thrown on you by angry supervillains is probably not one of them.

Looking back, I wonder if this did not start fading away around the time I wrote the series of gray entries about The Next Big Thing. At this point, I saw superhero comics as a symbol, an upwelling from the collective subconscious of the expectation that a new type of human was about to replace ordinary humanity. While the real “human version 3” will probably not be able to fly by willpower or shoot energy beams for their eyes, their thinking will be as far removed from that of current humans as superpowers would be from our physical abilities.

So as long as I remained ignorant, I remained enslaved. Reading superhero comics was in a certain sense a meaningful impulse, diverted into a symbolic form that is not exactly counterproductive, but unproductive.

In a similar way, I believe, the attraction of computer games is that they allow us to quickly do what we feel we want to be doing but cannot. In my case, guiding people to prosperity, peace of mind and lasting happiness (The Sims 2 and 3), or protecting the innocent from evil (City of Heroes). Unless I learn how to actually do these things in real life, I will probably remain attracted to these games until I die… and quite possibly beyond.

That is a chilling thought, right? But now you have to excuse me, the Double XP Weekend has begun in City of Heroes. It is time for Bright Hand of the Sun to protect his fellow heroes from the forces of Darkness!

Forum trolls

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One way to keep the level of online aggression down is to make the place more girlfriendly. But that is not always an option.

In the online world, there is an unpleasant and common thing called “forum trolls”. These are people who take part in discussions in order to enrage others. In the wider sense, any discussion forum could have trolls, even mailing lists and of course good old Usenet, for those who remember that. Blog comment sections are not spared either, although the blog authors usually clean up the mess when they check in.

What is the cause of this phenomenon, and what can we do to diminish it? Clearly most people would like to see less or none of it. Right?

Here is an article by Clay Shirky in Harward Business Review: Cleaning Up Online Conversation. He argues that there are mainly two factors that promotes trolling: Size (large chance of being seen) and anonymity (small change of having it come back to bite you).  By making forums more specific, encouraging identity, and giving ordinary users the power to bury the idiot comments, the problem can be greatly diminished. Examples of successful forums are given.

I would add that one alternative is to attract a different audience. For instance, nobody could start a flame war on the Project Meditation forum. The regulars and all but the greenest of visitors belong to the five-dimensional Realm of the Good or above. If you behave like an asshat, they will behave like an arhat in return. They will pity you and try to help you. This is because of the big difference in the level of understanding and purpose. A teacher will not quarrel with a grade school pupil, and a doctor will not quarrel with a patient. People whose purpose in life is to be healers of souls, will not be enraged when they see sick souls.

If a place is clean and well lit, roaches are unlikely to be much of a problem. Even should they show up, they cannot stay in such a place.

Of course, this is not really an option for most forums on the Internet. Yet. But when we have built a civilization that can stand the test of time, a Golden Age, a New Enlightenment, then perhaps this will be the rule. Until then, we shall have to just extend the light what little we can, each of us seeking to shine brightly for the benefit of all around us.

Depth of meditation

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Is that a box of Holosync CDs? We live in an age where advanced technology is sometimes indistinguishable from magic, but is it black magic or white magic? Is it contrary to first principles, or working along with them?

I revisited the Holosync Demo tonight. Back when Gaia – formerly Zaadz – was still alive but oh so slowly changing into a pure spam machine, they sent out a semi-advertising recommendation for this demo. They both belonged to the same “commercial New Age” arena. Gaia went under, Holosync is still thriving, and still spamming all kinds of products for their friends. Products you won’t need if their own product does what it says.

Be that as it may, I was reminded once again of their claim that the binaural technology can “meditate you”, that it can make you enter into a state of meditation deeper than that of an accomplished Zen monk. As measured by EEG waves, that is actually true.  If you close your eyes, listen to their soundscape and go with the flow, you should eventually end up with a huge proportion of delta waves in your brain, which is nearly impossible to achieve through meditation.  Or indeed in any other way except deep sleep.

It is also generally true that people who have meditated for many years and mastered advanced techniques, are able to slow down their brain waves to a deeper level than beginners.  Usually you can only reach alpha waves the first years, but eventually you can master techniques that produce theta waves, which are rarely dominant in waking states (although they appear partially – we rarely ever have one frequency completely filling the whole skull).

Now, the fallacy is to think that slow brain waves are the goal or purpose of meditation.  This may be the case in some scientific studies, but not in the established schools of meditation.  Usually meditation is part of a religious practice. Regular meditation is meant to transform the personality. And the whole “regular” thing and the patience involved is essential. It is a form of self discipline.  To bypass this is to render the whole exercise meaningless. It is like running marathon on a motorbike.  Sure, you get to the goal faster, but that was not the point!

There are various benefits, particularly to the health, of brainwave entrainment. I am still positive to it and I still use it (mostly LifeFlow now). But it does not meditate you.  And as I’ve said before, for religious meditation I have found it better to avoid brainwave entrainment. Your religion may vary, if any.  But the depth of meditation spiritually speaking is a different quality than mere brain waves.

Such is the world we live in, that quality is often reduced to quantity. I love living in this time and age, but in that regard it really is a “Kali Yuga”, an age of degradation, a barbarian age, an age of spiritual death. Love is reduced to hormones and hope to medical reforms. But such a thinking hurts the human soul. Flee while you can. The reduction of wholeness to parts is the essence of death, as the Buddha said in his last words:  “All things that are made of parts will come apart. Strive diligently!”

Memories of tomorrow

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When something weird is going on, the best thing to do is ask somebody weird!  But I am not sure I have anybody weirder than myself to ask…

Can what we read tomorrow influence what we write today?

Yesterday I wrote an entry about how things had become better and better not just in America but most of the world. This morning, I got a mail from Questia, the online library, graciously allowing me to read for free a book by Sthephen Moore and Julian Simon, called It’s getting better all the time. The book details 100 ways in which the 20th century was a great improvement on all centuries past. From the little I have had time to read of it, it argues that this is indeed the best of times.

Now, it’s not like I did not know that already. Furthermore, the book is published by the Cato institute, with whom I am already on moderately friendly terms (as in, not mocking them on sight).

Still, the placement in time is vaguely disturbing, don’t you think? If I had published that essay today instead of yesterday, it would certainly have looked like the book was an inspiration, if not outright cause of my writing.

I wonder sometimes. The fact that we cannot remember the future, does that necessarily also imply that we cannot act on it subconsciously? I have given you several striking examples over the last ten years, such as the time I wandered into the computer shop and asked about an external hard disk hours before my existing disk suddenly died.  I noticed even as I was talking to the shop guy that I had no idea why I was there and doing what I did. Yesterday I felt a sudden surge of inspiration, but there was no external event that caused it.  Well, at least not until this morning.

I have said before that I view this similar to magnets and small iron objects. Usually the magnet will pull a needle toward it but will itself not be moved. But occasionally the magnet is on a tipping point and may be drawn toward a much smaller object by the same force.  Perhaps time is the same.

Of course, there could be other explanations that don’t defy common sense. For instance, maybe I took a particular interest in the book because I had just written about the same subject, whereas normally I would have thought “that looks vaguely interesting but I have other things to do” and quickly forgotten it. Yeah. That would explain it…

Except…

That first part of the entry which is not quite so upbeat?  Early this morning I received the following quote on Twitter: “Real gratitude must be expressed in a more positive way, by asking yourself what you can do to help others ~ Ryuho Okawa”.  Why do I get a tweet about that after I write about gratitude in that context for the first time in my journal?

No matter how you look at it, that entry would have made perfect sense if I had written it one day later. But I didn’t. Instead, life presents me with the inspiration for it the morning after I upload it. Pretty fascinating.

Our true nature?

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The precious moment when, somehow, we become able to stand outside our own thoughts and look at them. Treasure these moments, for they are where we learn to know this mysterious, unknown person known as “myself”.

See if this does not resonate in your heart, as it did in mine.  “In the spirit world, what a person thinks about or prays for most strongly reveals their true nature. Awakening to this truth will completely turn your life around.”

I have a hard time imagining how it could possibly be otherwise. What else would more clearly reveal our nature?  Certainly not our title or paycheck. Certainly not our house or car. Not even our looks or our health. Probably not our political affiliation or even, in and of itself, what church or temple we go to, if any. But as the Bible says: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he”.  (Proverbs 23:7.)

If there is a problem with the original statement, it is that it is obvious. “It says itself” as we often say here in Norway. Well of course we are what we think! Really? Then why do appearances mean anything to us at all? Why does it matter what this or that person thinks about us?

If we want to know who we really are, there is no way around observing ourselves as the days go by. What am I thinking about when I am not thinking about anything else? When I am at rest, perhaps before falling asleep at night? When I am waiting in line and the line is slow, where are my thoughts? And what, if anything, do I wish so much to see happen that I am willing to pray for it when no one on Earth sees me?

It appeared to me, that we might imagine we were taken away to a secret place of power, and there ordered to state the deepest wish of our heart.  (Such an event starts one of my unfinished stories, which may be why I can imagine it easily.) Now, if this our greatest wish was to come true, that would certainly be something.  But what is it?  Do we really know that? And is this, our aspiration as it may be called, what we actually think about when waiting for the bus?