Unconditional or Conditional?

منگر اندر ما، مکن در ما نظر ... اندر اکرام و سخای خود نگر
- مولوی

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طفل را گر نان دهی بر جای شیر ... طفل مسکین را از نان، مرده گیر
چون که دندانها برآرد بعد از آن ... هم به خود، طالب شود آن طفل نان
مرغ پر نارسته چون پران شود ... لقمه هر گربه دران شود
چون برارد پر، بپرد او به خود ... بی تکلف، بی صفیر نیک و بد
- مولوی

یکی‌ را که خواهی‌ نماییش مهر ... بزرگیش جز پایه پایه منه
اگر بی‌ حسابش بزرگی‌ دهی‌ ... نه‌ ارج تو دارد نه‌ قدر مهی
- فردوسی

Persevere or Revenge?

Imagine a person who is truly faithful to her partner and being faithful is a core value in her belief system. However, her partner turns out to be cheating on her. Three scenarios are imaginable for this person who’s been hurt by being cheated on:

1. Witnessed and experienced the pain that occurs to a cheated partner, this person discovers being faithful more valuable than even before. Therefore, she not only perseveres being faithful, but also puts it into action more rigorously and responsibly. This scenario requires this person to have high personal integrity and act consciously.

2. The pain of being cheated on is so deep and intense that this person finds revenge as the only way to overcome the pain. When the cheating partner is not accessible, this person replicates the cheating on her next partner to ease the pain on herself by feeling “even” inside.

3. The third scenario is the extreme case of the second one. In this case, the pain is so severe that the person urges to protect herself from any sort of such pains in the future. Not to go through the pain of being cheated again, she turns to a cheating partner herself. It’s similar to “escape forward” strategy: The act of moving forward misrepresents proactive act of victory; however, it’s indeed a passive act of escape.

Unlike the first scenario, the second and third scenarios are probably chosen, consciously or unconsciously, by weaker personalities who lack a solid belief/value system. The deviation of the action (cheating) from the internal value (being faithful) causes internal irritation, which tends to be reduced by this group of people by different justification mechanisms: “everyone does it”, “don’t be such a naïve”, “let’s be real”, “be smart and mature”, etc. The level of deviation from the values is closely related to the level of pain we experience.

This mechanism of breaking our values to protect ourselves from pain and regrets can be also traced in many other situations. For example, if a seller lies or hides the defects of merchandise, we may not hesitate to do the same thing to others when we sell it later although this behavior is against our values.

Traditional or Modern Society?

Which one is more valuable?

1. Your friend sends you a birthday note because:
a) S/he remembers it, or
b) S/he has entered hundreds of names and their birth dates into a system, and set the system to alert the birthdays.

2. Your friend wishes you a happy new year by:
a) Calling you or writing you a letter/email, or
b) Sending you one of those fit-for-all Happy New Year emails.

3. A couple gets married because:
a) They simply love each other, or
b) They make a decision that is polluted with an unlimited list of desires, likes, and dislikes, which are shaped by ever-changing criteria.

4. A couple is separated and the son is living with his mother. The father pays for the son’s education because:
a) He cares about the future of his son, or
b) He’s obligated by the law to pay for his son’s education expenses.

5. A white guy hangs out with a black guy because:
a) The two guys are truly connecting as friends, or
b) It’s in rhythm with anti-racism culture and laws, which helps both sides to survive in the society.

And the list can continue for ever …

We benefit from a modern society by all its technology and law enforcement features; however, it also destroys many meaningful values and attitudes inhabiting in a traditional society, or replaces them with shallow or worthless ones.

So, once again, instead of the 2-way lousy solution of "either keep all the old values, or totally replace them with new ones", we need to get to know both sides thoroughly to find the third solution: Refine our values by keeping the good-old ones, and replace the bad-old with good-new ones.

Gut Feeling or Rational Thinking?

Think of a golf player. To make a good shot, a series of decisions (sweep strength, ball hitting point, direction, etc.) should be made based on some pieces of information (distance, topography, wind, etc.). A professional player is much better off if he follows his intuitions to sweep the club. On the other hand, an amateur player has to go through every step of analyzing the situation and his movements; otherwise, he may even not hit the ball!

Gut feeling and rational thinking are two powerful decision making tools that are required to be correctly understood to be properly applied to the related situations. Some people are so in love with fastness, easiness, and “coolness” of making decisions based on their gut feelings that they forget about its underlying limitations, while some other people immerse themselves in analysis so deep that they cannot recognize that they may have selected an inefficient and erroneous decision making tool.

Gut feeling is not a magic, gifted talent, chance, or the result of an extraordinary IQ. It is a smart recognition and decision making tool that is trained based on rational thinking. When we practice a series of logical analysis regularly for a long period, the procedure is programmed in our unconsciousness. After a while, we can take advantage of the “shortcuts” provided by an expert system (gut feeling) that is deeply trained over time.

Most analytical people don’t rely on their intuitions because they believe they need to spend a reasonable amount of time on some sort of analysis to reach a good decision. They are not aware that gut feeling automatically applies the most efficient and accurate analysis based on its years of training. The training might be conscious (a sport player), unconscious (the effect of environment) or even transferred from generations (evolution).

Located in unconsciousness, gut feeling automatically includes factors such as internalized values and feelings in decision making process. Rational thinking, on the other hand, may miss counting in these factors due to high concentration on analyzing information. Such ignorance may lead to regrets and unhappiness later after making a choice when the dust settles down and the ignored long-term existed values start to show up.

I think there is only one, but major drawback with gut feelings: We may make disastrous decisions if we overestimate the training, and thus, correctness of our gut feelings.

ReAlItY or rEaLiTy?

Imagine that “ReAlItY” and “rEaLiTy” are written on a paper and presented to a person with no knowledge of English language and Latin alphabets. Lacking the knowledge, the person considers the “forms” as the only source of information; thus, assumes that the two words have different meanings. On the other hand, a knowledgeable person knows that, despite differences in forms, the two words refer to the same concept.

To perceive higher levels of reality, we need to gain more knowledge, which I think, requires us to make it to a level that we can recognize the similarities beyond the “forms”.

To elaborate above statement, let me explain the two steps that, I think, are required to take us from the state of no-knowledge to ultimate-knowledge. We gain knowledge through investigating differences in the first step, and similarities in the second step.

Step 1- Separation: Transition from oneness to forms
Think of a new born baby as an example of the state of no-knowledge. The baby perceives the whole world as “one” entity – she sees no differences, say, between people and objects. However, after a while, the baby extends her knowledge by differentiating people from objects; her mother from other people; and her bottle of milk from other objects. It’s a recursive process that continuously separates items based on their differences, creates new forms, and shapes a knowledgebase of categorized forms. So far so good! But here is a problem: Sometimes we’re so busy with counting the leaves that we miss the tree; we’re so involved with the forms that we miss their roots and underlying similarities.

Step 2- Unity: Transition from forms to oneness
Now, think of knowledgeable people, distinguished in recent, say, century. We know that each branch of knowledge (science, art, religion, etc.) has been divided to uncountable number of sub-disciplines (“forms”); however, most of such eminent people are recognized due to their multi-disciplinary achievements. For example, Albert Einstein’s discoveries are cited in fields of physics and mathematics as well as philosophy. Observation of such trends, I think, suggests that the second step of extending knowledge requires another approach: Uniting forms by discovering their underlying similarities. Applying this procedure recursively, the ultimate knowledge is achieved when there are no forms anymore; the world of forms transcends to the world of oneness.

I think that Yin-Yang symbol brilliantly illustrates the concepts of separation and unity. At the first glance, we see the world of forms where black is separated from white. Looking deeper, we recognize the world of oneness where black and white are united. It also shows that oneness is not possible unless the forms correctly interrelate.

Strength or Weakness?

I think the positives and negatives of many characteristics are so interrelated that it’s hard to distinguish one as a strength or weakness. Here are some examples:

1) Self
- Think of a self-disciplined and stable person. Isn’t s/he also a little boring as a person who takes life too serious?
- Think of a playful and spontaneous person. Isn’t s/he also a little indecisive or driven by superficiality?
- Which one relies more on internal values, and which one on external?

2) Friendship
- Think of a reliable and caring friend. Isn’t s/he also a little controlling or demanding?
- Think of a fun and popular friend. Isn’t s/he also a little irresponsible of his/her actions or undependable in crises?
- Which one advances friendship in depth, and which one in width?

3) Communication
- Think of a person who has the patience required for a meaningful and logical conversation with deep attention to details. Isn’t s/he also a little self-righteous or so rigid with principles that s/he ruins the joy of a casual conversation?
- Think of a person who enthusiastically makes mutual exciting and joyful conversions with anyone on any topic. Isn’t s/he also a poor listener or an unsympathetic person who speaks before thinks?
- Communication networks consist of nodes and connectors. Which one is a node, and which one a connector?

4) Progress
- Think of a purposeful and committed person. Isn’t s/he also trapped by perfectionism that slows him/her down by setting unrealistic or pointless goals?
- Think of an energetic person who voluntarily jumps into all exciting projects. Isn’t s/he also an uncommitted person who overvalues immediate results and ignores long-term achievements?
- Which one is more successful with long-term projects, and which one with immediate or urgent ones?

As you see, each strength (X or Y) is associated with a weakness (A or B). Here is again the old question, rephrased: How can we substitute lousy 2-way Black & White solutions such as: “Either gain strength X to the cost of weakness A, or strength Y to the cost of weakness B” with a profound one as the third solution: “Gain strengths X AND Y to bypass weaknesses A AND B”?

Self-disciplined or Stubborn

The behaviors of self-disciplined and stubborn people may seem to be similar because both groups persist on their own set of principles, which are created based on some internalized values. However, I think, the source of internalized values, which could be internal or external, differentiates self-discipline from stubbornness.

Internal values, such as respect, love, care, competence, honesty, integrity, physical and mental health, intellect, etc are associated by human nature. When the principles are rooted in internal values, I refer the insistence on the principal to self-discipline. As internal values seldom change over time, the self-disciplined people usually hold on their principles for long periods.

External values, on the other hand, are coupled with egoistic motives, which are emphasized by external sources such as public eye. I think egoistic motives can be summarized as: “prove” myself or others that “I am right”; while the righteousness can be translated to being respectable, lovable, worthy, competent, smart, knowledgeable, etc.

When the principles are rooted in external values, the persistence is closer to the stubbornness side of the spectrum. External values are frequently changed in nature or priority based on the feedbacks that a person receives from external sources; therefore, the principles, continuously replaced or modified, do not get the opportunity to mature. As a result, the principles that a stubborn person persists on usually lack solid grounds.

From outside, I don’t see a clear line between self-discipline and stubbornness. But, I think that examining the source of values, internal or external, that a person utilizes to create his principles can locate him on the spectrum of self-discipline and stubbornness.

Interdependent or Independent?

As mentioned in a former post, independency, despite various benefits, is prone to be ruined by some side-effects such as selfishness and isolation. To explain the solution to overcome such drawbacks, let’s rephrase the question in the previous post: How can we substitute lousy 2-way Black & White solutions such as: “Either stay on own to keep the independency, or compromise the independency for the sake of interactions” with a profound one as the third solution: “Keep the independency, AND get involved in highly demanding interactions”?

Steven Covey suggests that an entity (person, company, country, etc.) matures in two steps: 1) from dependence to independence, and 2) from independence to interdependence. We’re mostly familiar with independence, but what about interdependence?

Interdependence, deeply rooted in “mutual” respect and trust, is required for all interactions between independent entities. It’s the hybrid of dependence and independence. I see it as the art of uniting paradoxes; a subtle merge to include the benefits of dependence and exclude the disadvantages of independence. In business jargon, it’s the win-win result: Benefit from the synergy among independent entities without the need of compromising their independencies. For analytical minds, dependency relations between two entities can be symbolized as 1+1 is less than 2; independency as 1+1 equals 2; and interdependency as 1+1 is greater than 2.

How can interdependence be achieved? I think that the self-awareness attained during the process of achieving a “real” independence guarantees the flow of interdependence afterwards. Real independence occurs inside while phony independence is more or less a facade. The two types can also be differentiated based on their underlying motives. More egoistic motives involved, the less real the independence is. The nature of egoistic desires can be summarized as: “prove” myself or others that “I am right”: I need nobody to either manage my life or get me what I want.

Egoistic desires are very strong motives to lead us towards external independence, but they are impotent to make us independent from inside. In addition, the fascination of the phony independence avoids us to proceed towards interdependence.

Friend or Mistake?

"When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake."
-Shimon Peres

How much time and effort do you think is required to substitute lousy 2-way Black & White solutions such as: "Either diminish the friendship because of mistake(s), or ignore the mistake(s) for the sake of friendship" with a profound one as a third solution: "Keep the friendship as it is, AND admit/correct the mistake(s)"? What's the required level of maturity held by two friends that enables them to find (or at least, examine the possibility of) The Third Solution?

Independent (Free) or Selfish?

In this post, my focus is on selfishness as a potential side-effect caused by achieving independence or freedom. I think the level of independence or freedom we attain is positively correlated with the amount of attention we pay to our “selves”; therefore, highly independent people are prone to selfishness.

Think about a neighbor whom you depend on for a daily ride to work. The dependence creates a bond between you and your neighbor, and the bond brings in the attention to the “other”; thus, selfishness steps back.

On the other hand, in our odyssey to independence, the main point of interest is the “self” and we seek routs that provide it with freedom. We may lose, break, or replace many of our ties to people, society, organizations or any other entities that we depend on. As the ties loosen up, the amount of our interest and attention is reduced: We don’t care about those subjects as much as before. At all decision points, independence of the self has the priority #1; therefore, we are heavily concentrated on the “self” and oblivious to the “others”. That’s about the time when individualism kicks in, followed by selfishness.

Talking about the sequence of Dependence->Bonding->Caring, some people fake independence by reversing this sequence. To pretend to be independent individuals, they replace Caring with attacking, invalidating, or humiliating the entities that they depend on - or seemed so in the public eye. It’s similar to an exaggerated state of denial. Let’s take an example from a larger segment of the society: governments. Iran is certainly dependent to the west to restore its economy. Foreign investments are needed to renovate oil wells and industrial infrastructures; modern technologies to upgrade communication networks; or even fuel to get the cars moving on the roads. However, the Iranian officials pretentiously claim independence by challenging the west and considering the sanction resolutions as “pieces of trash paper”. Such fake independence is only a big lie or a result of self-justification.

Moral of the story? We need some extra effort and attention not to be driven by the selfish side of our nature in our journey towards independence to avoid the sweetness of independence be ruined by the bitterness of selfishness and isolation.

Self-Assurance or Self-Justification?

“I am a good driver, he jump out of nowhere”; ”I studied hard enough, the test was a wack”; ”I was qualified for the job; the interviewer was a dumb”; ”I am a responsible employee, the company is a zoo” …

Have you ever been in any similar situation that you needed to justify an event? Do you think it is a positive attitude to justify our actions in one way or another? I think that to some degrees, as long as we are in the arena of self-assurance, Yes! Maybe, I am a skilled driver, and the accident had nothing to do with me; I was well-prepared for the test, and the examiner did not have enough time to come up with a well-designed test; I maintain all the job qualifications, and the interviewer had a different background; … maybe …

Self-assurance is an optimistic view of events that protects us from regrets and losses, and helps us to stop blaming ourselves and move on; however, if we incautiously exceed in applying this attitude, we’ll end up in the other side of the spectrum, which I call self-justification or self-deception. It happens because taking an action or occurrence of an event that is in dissonance with our beliefs or self-image creates internal "irritation"; therefore, we tend to use self-justification to fade the irritation by interpreting the action as a match to our beliefs, instead of admitting the action was a mistake or the beliefs were wrong.

Self-justification is a negative attitude because it wipes out the opportunity to learn from the mistakes by running the vicious cycle of mistake-> self-justification-> action. Self-justification gradually enters us into this loop, and without our notice, it starts rotating us in this circle so fast that not only it makes us blind to the reality, but also it gets the chance to create its own fake world of evidences and beliefs. Judgments and decisions are powerful tools employed by self-justification engine to label and categorize people and events (“out of nowhere”, “wack”, “dumb”, etc.) to create a false reality. Then, it convinces us believe in the false simply by making us close our eyes to the truth or distorting it. Self-justification also enforces the memory to distort or purely forget the past events that do not fit in its world. It’s always amazing to hear a self-justified person’s version of a story!

Finally, I think self-justification is similar to brain-washing: The influenced person either is blind to the truth, or distort it in a way to proof his network of erroneous beliefs; therefore, he always resists to leave his world of fallacy.

Choice or Decision?

This topic is sort of relevant to my previous post. I was talking to a friend about the similarities and differences between Choice and Decision, and found it interesting to post it here. I don't emphasize on the terms I use, but the concept.

The similarity between Choice and Decision is obvious: You pick one (or many) options out of a pool of available options.

But, here is the difference:
In making a choice, you make the above selection, while you are still "open" to other options. You are still capable of seeing and acknowledging them.

In making a decision, you make the selection, while you "kill"the other options. You are blind to a portion of reality - which are the omitted options. It's interesting to know that the root of "decide" is "-cide" which means "the act of killing" in Latin. Some other words with the same root are suicide, homicide, and pesticide.

When I value the openness to the omitted options, I am NOT suggesting the hassle of continuous re-evaluation, the feeling of dissatisfaction with the selection, or the hesitation of time and energy required to pursue the selection. Here, I am talking about acknowledging all options, regardless of the selection result.

Finally, as usual there is no clear line between the two; they are pretty much located on the two ends of a spectrum. I think living in the Choice side of the spectrum helps us to avoid being Judgmental and protects us from Self-Justification. Judgment and self-justification occures when we can't live with many paradoxical options or signals around us; thus, we make a decision, not choice, to eliminate the internal dissonance. That's why I think this topic is related to my previous post.

Smart or Judgmental?

I guess most people are proud of their aptitudes in identifying the personality types of people around them by observing their behaviors and habits. After all, who does not want to be skilled in the magic of instantly knowing everything about a newly-met person, or predicting an acquaintance’s behavior under certain circumstances?! This aptitude is usually found in a group of smart people known as socially smart, street smart, or a trendier name such as emotional intelligence adept.

Here, I’d like to talk about the side-effect of being smart in dealing with people and their personalities. I use Judgmental as a term to describe the negative side of this aptitude. Precisely, a smart person is judgmental when he rushes to conclusion using limited number of observations or “signs”. In the first sight, such definition of judgmental sounds positive, and to benefit from the “less is more” rule, in which I believe; however, this rule has some prerequisites that are not usually satisfied in the process of perceiving personalities. That’s why a judgmental mind leads to false conclusions.

Smart people are capable of recognizing very tiny details in the behavior of people around them. They capture these “signs” and use their smart minds to analyze the signs and transform them to a higher level piece of information: Facts. The smart mind works based on a set of pre-defined facts and trained rules. I’d like to use terms “analysis” and “perception” when the smart mind is running consciously or unconsciously, respectively. The judgmental mind kicks in when the smart mind “overweighs” the sign, rules, and facts while analyzing or perceiving.

The judgmental mind is blind to the latterly arrived signs that oppose the former signs. Already built up facts based on the former signs, the judgmental mind misses the opportunity of reexamining all signs side-by-side. It sees the reality in one way, but not the other, only because it happened to receive particular signs sooner.

The judgmental mind sees no difference in the validity of an articulated fact and a genuine one. Therefore, it rejects any requests to scrutinize an articulated fact or review the reasoning process. It believes so hard in its pool of facts, and at the same time, feels so proud of its capability in finding the “truth” using minimum amount of input, that it is blind to the reality.

To summarize it, I think smart people are prone to making mistakes by the trap of judgmental mind for the following reasons:

1. Trapped by rules: As explained, smart people are skilled in collecting signs and clues, and packaging them as facts and models. The articulated facts are saved to be used and referred to in the future analysis. After a while, the person is trapped in the web of facts and beliefs he weaved around himself. The web of facts, categories, and models disconnects the person from the reality and fuels the vicious cycle of creating erroneous facts and models.

2. Rush to conclusion: The egoistic mind in smart people expects them to make a conclusion in a short period; otherwise, it reminds that their intellect might be in question. Therefore, they do not have the patience to wait for further evidence, and they tend to rush to a conclusion without a second thought.

3. Lack of empathy: Smart people witnessed their outperformance in compare to people around them for years, so they are not usually well-trained as empathetic beings, capable of being in other people shoes. They only see one version (their own version); therefore, they miss to recognize the hidden causes behind the signs they observed in people. In most cases, an observed behavior is meaningful only if it is considered jointly with some background information.

4. Missing the big picture: Smart people are capable of capturing every tiny sign around them. Therefore, they are surrounded by myriad of detailed signs, which mostly could be just a “noise”. Smart people are so busy with processing huge amount of, possibly low-quality, data they collected that they are prone to miss the big picture.

Furthermore, I believe the same argument is valid in most cases that any sort of “analysis” is involved. Smart people are prone to be trapped by their judgmental minds; thus, make mistakes when analyzing a situation at work, their relationships, social and political issues, etc.