Archives for posts with tag: conscience
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‘To judge or not to judge’, is this a real question?

May 2, 2015 //
1

Each of us is constantly bombarded by barrage of information, most of it getting through even without us noticing what’s going on.
At the same time our conscious mind is constantly prodded: ‘do this, don’t do that, behave, lay low, stand up, be proud of yourself, don’t be so cocky’…

And we need to choose. This is how we become who we are.
Our past choices have determined who we are now and our present choices pave the way towards who we are going to be tomorrow.

Meanwhile some of the most pervasive pieces of advice we get are “don’t judge”, “love your neighbor as you love yourself” and “take care, anger blinds your reason and eats away your empathy”.

The last one is a ‘piece of cake’, it is so reasonable that it make no sense to comment on it.

The second one is so classic that most of us forget it’s importance.
Helped by the fact that it’s not at all easy to put it into practice. Loving isn’t like judging, it doesn’t come as easily and one cannot make himself love another on the spur of the moment.
Yet, in practically no time, we can pass judgement on almost anything, sometimes even without giving much thought about it.

The third one, “don’t judge”, is the one I find the most interesting.

Had I been a cocky brat I’d tell you that those who dispense this advice so generously as if they were aspirin want to keep all the judgement power for themselves, after all the firsts to give it to us were the mythical sages of the ancient times…
I can’t vouch for them all but I don’t think this was the real reason. The authoritarian paradigm is so destructive for a society as a whole that if a community sticks to it for a significant amount of time it ends up badly so this advice must have survived for another reason.

Yet.
How to refrain from judging and, even more important, what would we become if we gave it up completely?

Merriam Webster, the place where I go every time I have the least inkling that I’d be missing something when it comes to the meaning of words, defines “to judge” as:

: to form an opinion about (something or someone) after careful thought

: to regard (someone) as either good or bad.

So. Could we go through life without having opinions or preferences? Could we even preserve our individuality? What would happen if all of us would act as the members of a bee hive do?
OK, some of you will say now that we’d be easy pray for anybody who had managed to preserve a shred of his own individuality and who, presented with such an opportunity, would not be able to refrain itself.
As someone who had spent his first 30 years under communist rule I’d say ‘yes, you are right, only history shows us that such arrangements are untenable. Every time a society has given up too much of it’s power to choose and delegated too much of it to its ruler, situation know as an ‘imperium’ (dictatorship, absolute monarchy, monopoly, call it what you like), that society had passed through unpleasant historical periods’.

So what are we to do? To judge or not to judge?

How about using our common sense? How about reversing the order of those three advices?

What if we start with anger management and then work up our empathy?

After graduating from that stage we can start loving our neighbors. Not all of them at once, of course. If we keep in mind that our goal is to learn how to love – or at least to respect – even the most unpleasant of them we can start with the the one we like most. Only don’t forget to get to the end of the line.

And yes, while we go through the first two stages it would help to stop condemning people. Don’t kid yourself, you’ll never be able to stop judging, no matter how hard you’ll try. What you can do, quite easily, as soon as you catch yourself in the act of judging, is to consider the situation as calmly and compassionately as possible and then to halt the process just before it’s conclusion, before the ‘condemnation’ part.
Remind yourself that you don’t have all the pertinent information – we seldom do, even when we really need to make an important decision, and that your ‘sentence’ is, most of the times, irrelevant for the person you were judging.

You have, of course, noticed that I was speaking about the ‘casual’ and every day judgement we perform all the time, not about the instances when we do have to make a decision.
The point is that, very shortly after you start implementing the first two steps, you’ll notice a gradual shift in your general attitude towards the world.
And no, that will not happen simply because you’ve went through the motions. You will be able to complete the motions only after you convince yourself that being judgemental is actually bad for yourself, in the first and foremost place.

You see, every time you pass a harsh condemnation you actually coral yourself into a corner. Even when fresh information comes and refutes your judgement you feel the need to stand by your ‘standards’ – cause yes, every time you pass a judgement you do set a standard. So standard after standard, each time you pass a new judgement you erect a new fence between you, and those who agree with you, and the rest of the world.
And fences are strange things… some are good, those who keep the cattle in and the burglars out while some are so thick that prevent you from seeing what’s going on in the rest of the world.

After all our fences are our responsibility, we erect them, we maintain them…

Now please tell me how many of you did judge me for starting this post with a picture of a strange looking fence and how many figured out that that fence was in fact a very ingenuous play ground designed by Tejo Remy?

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Categories Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Manipulation: useful tool, mortal sin or what?!?

April 27, 2015 //
6

This doesn’t catch the entire picture – each of us is heavily dependent on the environment into which we happened to be born – but clearly states the difference between us humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.
We are able to make conscious decisions and we love to apportion blame.

When engaging into our favorite pastime we’d better take into consideration two things: Our consciousness/rationality is limited and we can speak about blame only if intent was present.
We don’t have unlimited access to other people thoughts, nor can we see very far, so, in reality, we are aware of a very limited portion of the world around us. Moreover, no matter how confident we are in our minds, our processing power is also limited. So both our decisions and our ability to accurately apportion blame are not at all infallible. Far from it.
On the other hand blaming natural causes or even people who are not aware of (some) of the consequences produced by their actions for what has happened to us doesn’t make sense. A lighting doesn’t know that it frightens people and may wreak havoc in a city if the electric grid is knocked out of order, just as the ‘financial engineers’ who came up with the concept didn’t know, at first, what effects ‘securitization‘ will have upon the global financial markets.

Hey, you promised us something about manipulation and management, not another essay about financial markets manipulation!

True enough so let me discuss first what manipulation is: nothing but a psychological tool. Please note that I’m concerned here with the lofty notion of ‘thought manipulation’, not with the mere ability of ‘juggling’ objects into position….
Regardless of why or for what purpose it’s performed, manipulation remains a simple and very efficient tool that can be used even ‘pre-consciously’ – if you don’t believe me remember how toddlers manipulate their parents into buying them diverse things that are not only a complete waste of money but also sometimes dangerous for their long term health. In this case the manipulation is twofold: the merchandisers position certain items near the cashiers’ desks so that the children might not miss them.

As with any tool it’s up to the user (a.k.a. manipulator) to set the standards, what’s acceptable and what not.

Really? But what if the manipulator is not fully aware of the consequences of his acts? (Remember my digression into the subject of limited rationality/consciousness?) Could it be that the entire world might be shaken, even worse that it has already been, by the yet unforeseen consequences of a manipulation already underway?
Well, as no manipulator is that skilled as to be able to avoid detection for very long, the sad part about the whole thing is that most of the time we know/feel that we are being manipulated and allow it to happen out of laziness or complacency… This being exactly the moment when we should start blaming ourselves for our own lassitude.

Even more ‘interesting’ is how we rationalize the daily use of manipulation:

“The uncomfortable truth is that when resolving all the different pressures from existing customers, your own organization, bids for new business, and the like, you are inevitably going to have to persuade people to do things that are not entirely in their own interests.”

So, how much ‘out of their own interests’ is it acceptable for us to manipulate the thoughts of other persons? Specially when they are, after all, our close associates – either clients, subordinates, bosses or even colleagues, friends, relatives, close family.

And, given that sooner or later everybody realizes at least some of the manipulation he has been subjected to, the survival of our entire social life basically depends on how much manipulation each of us is disposed to submit to.

Rather scary, don’t you think? Specially if we take into consideration the fact that manipulators do not always know exactly what they are doing….

Don’t despair. There are people, among the ‘movers and shakers of this world’, who have noticed at least part of what’s going on and have started to act:

“Fundamentally, I believe, the gap (between HR’s aspirations and actual role) arises from two complementary causes. First, executives and managers often think their job is to get financial results rather than to manage people. Second, when executives and managers neglect people management, the HR function worries about lapses and tends to “lean in” to right them itself. On the surface, this approach seems to meet an organization’s needs: management moves away from areas it views as unrewarding (and perhaps uncomfortable), while HR moves in, takes on responsibilities, solves problems, and gains some glory in the process.

But this approach is based on erroneous thinking. It is bad for management and bad for the company as a whole. When HR sees itself as manager, mediator, and nurturer, it further separates managers from their employees and reinforces a results-versus-people dichotomy. That’s why many HR teams refer to the rest of the company as “the business”; too often, they don’t really perceive themselves as a core part of that business.”

When more of us will get it that we’re all together in this, we’ll reinvent mutual respect and scale back manipulation to its natural status: a very useful tool for grabbing the attention of whomever we want to talk to. Used in this manner, like all decent advertisers do, manipulation becomes not only innocuous but also useful for both parties. One is able to get its message across and the other finds out easier what’s going on in this world.

There are costs to be incurred, of course. Those who refrain from more aggressive manipulation may loose some money at first and those who pay a lot of attention to the messages – precisely because they are no longer aggressively manipulative – may end up spending in this manner a lot more time than they used to until now. But if and when we’ll realize that long time survival is a lot more important than short time profit then we’ll foot the bill without much hassle.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, “Everything you do…” : https://www.facebook.com/drwaynedyer/photos/a.387583371029.167523.83636976029/10151331343881030/?type=1&theater
Segoviano, M., et all, Securitization, Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp13255.pdf
Case Study, The Colapse of Lehman Brothers, Investopedia: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lehman-brothers-collapse.asp
Peeling, Nic, Principles of Management, Dorset House Publishing, http://www.dorsethouse.com/features/excerpts/exdpch1.html
Allen, Peter L., Toward a new HR. Philosophy, McKinsey Quarterly: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/Toward_a_new_HR_philosophy?cid=other-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1504
Dolmanian, Sarchis, Profit, Might it be overrated?: https://nicichiarasa.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/profit-might-it-be-overrated/

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself

April 22, 2015 //
1

We need to let our hearts acknowledge beauty wherever and whenever we encounter it before telling to ourselves ‘I cannot understand (accept) what is going on there’.
If we’ll do that, ‘not understanding’ will no longer stand in the path of our acceptance of something different than we were accustomed to.

If humans have been created equal why some cannot express themselves just as freely as all the others?

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Categories Choices we make, Culture, Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Seeing is believing, right?

March 5, 2015 //
2


But eyes alone are not capable enough.
To see ‘right’ one has to think first about what is actually going on in front of his naked eyes!
And you should also take into consideration that all the tricks shown below have been purposefully put together by people who command intimate knowledge about how our brains work.

http://www.smash.com/10-amazing-perspective-tricks-will-mess-mind/

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Categories Choices we make, Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Karl Marx and Max Weber, two different pupils of Plato.

February 28, 2015 //
5

Karl Marx. The world is crooked – there is too much exploitation imposed by the haves upon the have-not’s – so it has to be righted by those who have the right answer to the problem. And because the world doesn’t know what’s good for it, the ‘enlightened’ – the communists who are at the forefront of the class struggle – have the duty to impose the revolution by force.
The crux of the ‘solution’ being the abolition of both private property and the state. The private property because it is the tool with which the haves dominate the have-not’s and the state because it is the tool used by the haves to protect their private property from the have-not’s who continuously try to steal it.
But what tool can be best used to enforce the dissolution of the private property and to insure that the misguided and the ill intended don’t revert to the ‘old and corrupt ways of the bourgeoisie’? The state, of course. Hence we’ll have to postpone a little its dissolution, only until the first chores would have been completed, of course.

Max Weber. The world is too complicated to be understood/run by a single man, no matter how capable. That’s why the decision making process must be rationalized. Weber’s main methodological tool was the ‘ideal type’, a mental construction that is to be substituted to replace the real problem that has to be solved or the real thing that is being studied. This ideal type being stripped of the ‘unimportant’ aspects of the reality will make it a lot easier for the ruler/decision maker/scientist to understand what is going on there and to come up with the ‘correct’ decision or ‘clear’ understanding of the matter. This means that Weber was convinced that individuals are able, in certain conditions, to reach valid conclusions. Which is, of course, OK. Furthermore Weber had ‘reached the conclusion’ that if larger problems are to be solved then the efforts of single individuals are not enough and that in order to fulfill this task in a satisfactory manner many rational decision makers (which have been properly trained in their strict domains) have to be inter-connected into a well structured ‘net’. This way the big problem will be sliced into more manageable sub-problems which will be analyzed by specialists and then the final solution will be re-assembled by people specially trained for exactly this task. Nowadays this entire concept is known as ‘bureaucracy‘. In theory it sounds right, doesn’t it? What could be better than an all encompassing net comprised of rational/professional decision makers who act according to a well considered and well intended ‘ideal type’? Whose ideal type? Good question, indeed. Just as good as ‘who and how trained the ‘decision makers’?’.
(There is something we must keep in mind when discussing Weber, as a person. He died relatively young, before having a chance to reach a ‘final conclusion’, or at least one to satisfy him. That also has to be the reason for which he hasn’t published much during his lifetime.)

Plato. Society (the city, the “Republic’) should be run by a specific kind of (dedicated) people and because “those with the philosopher’s natural abilities and with outstanding natures often get corrupted by a bad education and become outstandingly bad” this ‘special kind of people’ need to receive “the proper kind of education“. Meaning that ‘a true philosopher’ has to be versed in ‘the Forms of Good’, which are amply explained in ‘The Cave Allegory’.
The gist of the matter is two layered.
1. The reality is hidden behind some ‘veils’ (or in ‘shadows’ if you prefer the original metaphor) but properly trained professionals (the philosophers) can be taught to see what Plato describes as ‘the ultimate truth’.
2. These professional truth seekers have not only the right to lead the rest of the people ‘into the light’ but the obligation to do so! Furthermore, for Plato the ‘ideal political structure’ – the Republic – would be so organized as to ‘force’ into public duty those who have been specially ‘bred and trained’ to perform such duty:
“Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.”

I believe that by now you have grasped where I’m headed to. There is not much difference between Marx and Plato and a very close relationship between these two and Weber. Still, the fact that Weber was not yet done thinking about this matter at the moment of his untimely death makes me believe that if he had some more time at his disposal he would have understood what Laozi taught us about the concept of “nonaction”:

And isn’t it very strange that the best (short) presentation I was able to find about Laozi is hosted by a site called “Plato.Stanford.edu”?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
http://www.academia.edu/4192854/Weber_s_methodology_understanding_concept_of_ideal_type_as_necessary_element_of_Weberian_comprehensive_sociology_Working_paper_
http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber12.html
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-the-wicked-leader-is-he-who-the-people-despise-the-good-leader-is-he-who-the-people-revere-the-lao-tzu-188515.jpg

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Categories Choices we make, Culture, politics, Social justice, The kind of world we live in

‘Baby Girl’.

February 23, 2015 //
1

Do you have any qualms about ‘what’s going to happen when these children grow up’?

Have you considered the fact that it was us who raised them?

That we, their parents, presented them with clothes like these when they were young and that it was a member of our own generation who had fashioned this design and then organized manufacturing and distribution?

That we, their parents, are those who share jokes like the one I just found in my mail?

“Today be my baby girl’s 18th birthday. I be so glad that this be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all those payments!
So I call my baby girl, LaKeesha, to come to my house, and when she get there, I say, “Baby girl, I want you to take this check over to yo momma house and tell her this be the last check she ever be gettin’ from me, and I want you to come back and tell me the ‘spression on yo mama’s face.”
So, my baby girl take the check over to her momma. I be anxious to hear what she say, and bout the ‘spression on her face.
Baby girl walk through the door, I say, “Now what yo momma say ’bout that?”
She say to tell you that “you ain’t my daddy” …and watch the ‘spression on yo face.”

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Categories Choices we make, Psychology, Respect Mutual., The world as described in jokes

Rituals

February 22, 2015 //
4

This post is dedicated to my friends who do not yet accept that rituals still play a huge role in our lives.
No matter if we are religious or not, in the conventional sense of the word, we all feel something special when witnessing rituals being observed.

To me this is a powerful proof that we need to belong, that our need to be an accepted member of a community is ingrained somewhere deep inside us. And for good reason because none of us would be able to survive on its own for more than a very short time.
In fact this is the real meaning of ‘religion’.
“Religion (derived from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to bind’) binds people together.”

From time to time religious teachings become perverted, in most instances by precisely those who were supposed/’entrusted with the divine mission’ to preserve and pass them on to future generations. We shouldn’t allow these manipulators to destroy our livelihood.

Maybe time has come for us to understand the entire process and to rebuild religiosity/togetherness on mutual respect?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HW3QVLlK-kE?feature=player_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0W7YdKYPl0
https://www.wordnik.com/words/religare

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Categories Choices we make, Culture, Psychology, Respect Mutual., The kind of world we live in

Stages

February 9, 2015 //
0

“- Can we talk to you?
– We talked, now it’s time for each of you to listen to your own hearts.”

Misterious Ways, Pure of Heart: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0655359/?ref_=ttep_ep3

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Categories Choices we make, Psychology

Consciousness. And now what?

January 26, 2015 //
0

More than five years ago a friend introduced me to the work of Humberto Maturana.
I was instantly hooked.
Only I’m not that interested in how consciousness appeared to be as I am in the consequences of us being conscient.

“The argument unfolds as follows: physicists have no problem accepting that certain fundamental aspects of reality – such as space, mass, or electrical charge – just do exist. They can’t be explained as being the result of anything else. Explanations have to stop somewhere. The panpsychist hunch is that consciousness could be like that, too – and that if it is, there is no particular reason to assume that it only occurs in certain kinds of matter.”

This excerpt perfect illustrates what I have in mind.

First thing after becoming conscious – ‘aware of his own awareness’ in Maturana’s terms – man realized how fragile he is.  The best way to assuage that feeling was to find an explanation and a purpose for the whole situation. That’s when our immortal soul came to be. Created by God or simply invented by us, it doesn’t make any practical difference.
In time, as rational knowledge constructed wider and wider inroads into the unknown and currently offers scientific explanations for almost everything, the Creator God became less and less necessary. But ‘soul’ survived and now accompanies our still smart and yet unfulfilled desire to understand the origin of our consciousness. And now that we are no longer satisfied with the ‘divine origin’ of anything but not yet ready to accept that we might indeed be something special – fright again, being special implies extreme fragility/responsibility for one’s own fate – we are constantly searching for a new way to connect our nature/fate to the rest of the known Universe.

Hence the advent of ‘panpsyhism’. Which is not such a new idea as it would seem at first glance. The Buddhist notion of successive reincarnation has been around for more than two millennia.

How about accepting what Maturana teaches us – that consciousness of self is something we have continuously improved by using it synergistically with language and all these could take place simply because of the increased processing power that was accidentally bestowed, evolutionary speaking, upon our brains – and move on? If a better explanation will ever dawn upon us – by feat, by chance or even by divine intervention – we can always come back and reconsider – this is how science works, right?
Remaining stuck in this so called ‘Hard Problem’ – what is the direct link between our anatomy/brain physiology and our thoughts? – won’t take us anywhere, for sure.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/pub/hvf/papers/maturana05selfconsciousness.html

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Categories Choices we make, Culture, Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Thinking outside of the box

December 12, 2014 //
2

Quite a popular mantra nowadays, don’t you think?

Whenever somebody tosses you a problem without also giving you the tools to fix it and you dare ask for instructions about how to fulfill your new task, you’ll inevitably get this very helpful ‘advice’… And most often it’s your boss who does this, right?

So?

Ever tried Google-ing it?  Wikipedia has, of course, an extensive entry about this notion. Lifehack.org has a decent list of 11 to do-s on this topic, only many of them are things you’d better do in advance…

But what can a man do in a hurry?

First of all stop searching desperately for a solution.
Most of us entertain the idea that the human brain is a well honed tool that only needs to be pointed at the target, fed the pertinent information and, presto, it will provide a solution if pressed/enticed hard enough.
The problem is that something inside that tool (part of our subconscious) has been conditioned during our formative years to stay inside a set of limitations/comfort zone. Don’t do this, don’t touch that, don’t lie…

While staying inside the rules is, usually, a very helpful rule of thumb – specially when it comes to survival situations where you don’t have time to consider the matter – sometimes you really need to do exactly the opposite. Drinking your own piss, for instance.

Whoa! Another quack… I’m out of here!
Hold your horses and keep on reading. Or, even better, click on the highlighted link and find out about how a guy saved himself by simultaneously braking two taboos. Not only the one about drinking your own urine but also the one about ‘not hurting yourself’.

And by reading that article you’ll also understand a lot about the inner workings of the human mind.

So, what do we have there?
A guy wants to convince us that drinking pee is wrong for us. To do this he needs to grab our attention so he brings in Aaron Ralston, a well know character who had his hand pinned down by a fallen boulder, waited awhile to be saved, drunk his own urine during some of that time and, finally, when he got tired of the entire situation, cut himself free, leaving behind his right palm.
Do I still have your attention? My post is about thinking out of the box and I’m trying to illustrate my point by using an article about how bad it is to drink urine, which uses as an attention grabber the story of a guy who did drink his own piss and cut his hand in order to free himself…

A box in a box which lies inside another box… Yep. that’s it, you got it.

The first thing you need to do when having a hard time trying to find a solution is to understand that no matter what you think about your current situation you ARE in a box. In fact not in only one box but deep inside the bowels of a regular Matryoshka.

matryoshka

Feeling desperate? That’s OK. Now that you don’t have anything more to loose than your shackles you’ll have an easier time.

Being ‘inside’ a box is not that bad. The point is that you need to be aware of this fact and to choose yourself which box is the right one for you instead of allowing some ‘strangers’ to box you where ever they want you to be.

So all that is left to be done is to look around, identify the walls of the box you are currently in, the limitations imposed upon you by those walls and how those limitations might prevent you from solving your problem. Finally, look for a way to accede into the wider box. Don’t be afraid nor dream that you’ll ever get out into the open, the walls I’m speaking about are constantly being build by our very own minds.

And this is good. Out there there is no order we can speak of. It’s the Unknown and we are rightfully afraid of it. That’s why we conquer any new ground piece by piece, precisely by building a wall immediately after we have a glimpse of understanding about something.  Usually this process takes place unnoticed by our consciousness. We have a moment of grace, the old wall becomes transparent, we see something behind it and we imediately build another wall a little further. Both to protect the new acquired knowledge and to defend the realm of the familiar from the dark forces of the unknown.

The problem with this process is that most of the time the walls are opaque. Not only the exterior one, most of the interior ones stay opaque for most of us even after they have been breached numerous times. And much of their opaqueness come from nothing else but our own fright.

The Ancient Greeks divided the world in two parts. The Cosmos, which had a certain structure and was governed by rules, and the Chaos, the  frightful rest. The separation between these two places, Cosmos and Chaos, was nothing but one of the walls I keep mentioning and the Greeks never dared look behind it so they didn’t have to face any of the monsters created by their own imagination and set free to roam the Chaos. We, despite our modern belief in science, are no better than they were. Still afraid we wait, wriggling our hands, behind the protection walls we have erected to protect our inquisitive minds from straying into the unknown.

So, next time you feel like taking an exploratory trip into the unknown, start by identifying the walls around you. Both to understand what you have to overcome and to find out where your fall back positions are.

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Categories Psychology, The kind of world we live in
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