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The illusion of scarcity. How our survival instinct might lead to the end of our survival.

// July 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Environment, Philosophy

One of the greatest dilemmas for the human mind is that believing we control it makes us feel, in fact, more in control. It gives us “accountability”, everything that happens to us is a result of our choices…

This belief is deeply integrated into our teachings. It starts with the bible and the story of Eden: how the first man and woman ate the forbidden fruit and came to know right from wrong! The education system is structured accordingly, reinforcing the same message that there is a very precise correct answer to every question, and a specific correct behavior for every setting. Your grades, your acceptance, even the love given to you depends on your capability to recognize what is considered to be correct.

Therefore we are trained to believe that the more failures you have in life, lesser are your grades, credits or social status and therefore more you stay “behind”. The more you stay behind the less you are “accepted”, the less you are loved. The less you feel loved the more you fear not to be loved. The more the fear, deeper the pain. Deeper the pain, stronger the anger. Longer the anger, faster the depletion of emotional and physical resources, fear of death and finally domestication…

Domestication of animals is something that hunter gatherers have been doing since 20.000 years, starting during the ice-age. Through the ages they have perfected the techniques and have been able to rule over herds with very little or no effort whatsoever. The key to domestication has always been the exploitation of the survival instinct. Once the animal believes he has no other chances of survival but to yield, it “brakes”, so by means of restriction of freedom, inflicted pain, fear, hunger, and little treats humans ruled over animals. This process has a name in psychology:  “Operant Conditioning” (heard of Pavlov’s dog?)

Operant Conditioning: A process of behavior modification in which a subject is encouraged to behave in a desired manner through positive or negative reinforcement, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the reinforcement with the behavior.

Some very twisted mind, down the road successfully tested the same methods on his fellow humans. Our society is running on a curriculum built by a very experienced animal trainer and this is why it works to the perfection:

Many philosophers, psychologists and now scholars of the inner workings of the mind believe that we have two very distinctively separate minds. Our conscious mind and our unconscious mind. Two allegories that I have read in a book recently described this to me with an unprecedented clarity (The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt). One was the Chariot Allegory of Plato where the mind is a chariot trailed by two horses. One of the horses, the white one, is depicted as the moral impulse, or positive passions of our unconscious mind while the other horse (black) represents our irrational passions, appetites or better our ego. The charioteer represents our rational mind, trying to control the chariot and especially the black horse with the help of the white horse. An incredibly insightful addition to this allegory by the author that cracked me up is the presence of a third character, our conscience, represented by the charioteer’s father sitting in the back constantly nagging him of everything he did or was doing wrong.

A more elegant, simpler allegory presented by the author was that our unconscious mind is an elephant, and our rational mind is a little rider on top and that it would be absurd to even think that the rider could lead the elephant by force.

In both allegories and in many cases of laboratory experiment and research it is clear that most of our choices are made by our unconscious mind, the animal. And there is one circuit that shuts everything else down, throws the rider off or barely allows him to grab onto something and ride along: the survival instinct.

And by tapping into this circuit, by building an illusion of scarcity, scarcity of love, scarcity of resources, scarcity of belonging, scarcity of happiness man inflicted man with fear, and that is how man ruled over man.

The animal trainer, is the charioteer that let the white horse loose, left the reins to the black horse and then threw his father to the wolves to sit back and relax…

Led by man with no father (conscience), no white horse (righteousness) and no reins (rationality) humanity is on a crash course with the survival instinct of a bigger being: Mother Nature!

The problem is that now that circuit is shorted and our survival lies in our capability in resolving a paradox (which by definition is a paradox in itself): only by letting go of our fear of death, by accepting it, by shutting down our survival instinct we will be able to survive…

Sadok Kohen
“In truth, without deceit, certain and most veritable”

Sustainable Life

// February 26th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Environment, Philosophy

Meet your savior :

Sustainable: a method of harvesting or utilizing a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged

This is what nature and its circle of life teaches us. This is the only way that life was always supposed to be. This is how we should create, this is how we should consume.

It is a pity that the human intellect, so amazingly bright and resourceful is so easily blinded or better numbed by abundance and is inclined to see the truth only when faced with an imminent danger or even worse, after the complete loss of what was once abundant.

This behavior is so common among humans that I am starting to think that this has to be a genetic trait. The common sense points more to a global brain washing conspiracy plotted by the ones in power several centuries ago but it is more painful to accept that we all could be unconsciously controlled so easily. Apparently we tend to prefer to believe a lie if told masterfully then face the cold truth.

It is the blue pill, red pill paradox depicted in Matrix. Cipher misses the taste of a juicy steak that he eats in the Matrix even if he knows it is not real. So if given the choice, knowing what the truth is, how many really would have taken the red pill? My guess is not many…

The truth is that it is a simple mathematical fact that resources are finite. In a friendship, if you continue to be the one taking from it, the friend will eventually have nothing to give anymore. In business if you are the employer and continue to be demanding of your employees without giving them equal value in experience or compensation, they will eventually quit, steal or not perform anymore. If you are the employee and you continue to slack and not perform what is expected of you in exchange for a fair compensation, eventually you will be fired and hardly find a better job. If you spend more then you have, you will have eventually people at your door taking all that you have, including your liberties…

These are fairly simple concepts that most of us understand and try to act accordingly although we still fail miserably most of the times. The fact that in ANY relationship be it material or emotional the amount of resources are always finite is not something that we want be reminded of. I believe the reason for this is that it is pretty scary and limiting! It is like having an accountant on your shoulders 24/7, and not only for money matters but in every action you take, fuck that!

There is a bigger problem though in how the ones that are aware of this major issue are trying to make people change. Imminent danger, fear of loss, legislation, peer pressure, emotional manipulation are not sustainable methods in themselves to change this behavior. The majority of people have not enough courage to face the truth when left alone. They will all eventually fade away and turn back to be their usual denial.

There is only one way to accept all this and make a change: to understand that we are all one. The minute we internalize the fact that each and every cell of the universe is weaved together as a single dna and that there is no self, we can start and act accordingly. History tells us that this kind of unison is more likely to happen only after we face a major loss. I wish this weren’t true, but believing the opposite would be to create simply another kind of Matrix…

What we need at the core is to find better ways to teach as many people as possible what it really means to feel as one, to act as one, because if there is only one thing that is unsustainable is believing we are apart!

The resources of the world being depleted, crime, poverty, are only symptoms, and you cannot fight an illness by attacking the symptoms, you can only snooze the discomfort..

And that is the last thing we should want to do…

Sadok Kohen
“In truth, without deceit, certain and most veritable”

Buying off our way to Heaven (!)

// September 26th, 2007 // No Comments » // Environment

It keeps surprising me how certain patterns never change throughout history when it comes to human nature.

It all started when the first ape understood how to use a club to hunt more effectively and the ape next to him used the same club to hunt the hunter and keep the prey. We tend to be very clever in finding the easy way out. Countless acts of redemption were always made in the name of a Higher Self, the man we “couldn’t” be.

You sin, you pay the priest. You commit adultery you pay the jewelery store. You are never there for your children, you pay the toy store. You eat to much, you pay the gym (and never go). You smoke, you pay insurance (and keep smoking). You don’t have time to care, you pay charity (and keep not caring)… You destroy the earth, you buy carbon offset!! (and keep DESTROYING).

You can actually calculate the value of the portion of the world you just destroyed and buy it back.

Not that I am against carbon offsetting as an end result. I am against the way carbon offsetting (like charity and several other examples) has become a currency were it should have become a place for people to go and reflect and mend the wounds inflicted, therefore taking responsibility for their actions and understanding where the problem really was. By doing this taking a step further to enlightenment and to become part of the “real” solution.

A very simple way to understand how our psychology works is to look at a little experiment they have done in a kindergarten. Parents were always late to pick up their children so the teachers decided to put a per hour fine on parents who were late. Guess what, the rate of being late drastically increased! Once “being late” had a price, parents decided they could afford it!

Can we really put a price on a disappointed child, or on health, or on nature ? Evidently the message out there is that we can. This is why the word sorry became so cheap that everybody could easily afford to say it, under ANY circumstances or even worse, they hire others to say it for them.

The solution, as always, lies inside us. The day we are not afraid to look, we’ll understand that Heaven’s not for sale…

Sadok Kohen