Завершить бой после войны, до начало войны.

Не редко уже за ранее известно кто победит в войне, не смотря на это малиннике страны всё равно сопротивляются, из принципа, за идею, просто на зло оккупантам или по каким то другим причинам.

Так вот, обявив в начале боевых действий что каждая единица военной техники выведена из строя и компенсация за каждого раненного или убитого солдата будет высчитана из бюджета проигравших, доминирующая сторона настроит народ которому всегда и так не сладго во время войны, против своих защитников.

Народ и так знает что шансов нет, но не против оказанного сопротивления из за принципа и что бы усложнить жизнь оккупантам на столько что они решат что это того не стоит. На этом принципе строится оборона маленьких стран, иметь армию такого размера не что бы победить а что бы оккупировать было дороже чем вырученная прибыль от оккупации.

В такой ситуации найти людей которые оказывают сопротивление, и в результате по разным причинам лишать народ жилья, здоровья и жизни только усилит сопротивление создав замкнутый круг, где вина за все страдания ляжет на оккупантов.

С другой стороны компенсировать ущерб из бюджета оккупированной страны должно, если та страна правильно подсчитала размер своей армии, привести к минимальным затратам так как армия будет минимальной но такой что бы небыло выгодно наподдать.

Но самый большой эффект это психологический.

Твердить что страна оккупирована только с благими намерениями, скажем освободить народ от чего/кого то, установить демократию на века, или даже что то совсем бессмысленное как оккупация что бы прекратить конфликт, это всё конечно хорошо но вряд ли многие оккупированные увидят логику во всём этом, такие лозунги скорее всего рассчитаны на международную публику.

А если к пропаганде о войне ради народа прикрепить цену за не верие в виде вышесказанного то зразу найдутся люди среди народа которые прикинут одно к другому и сделают вывод, который даже будет казаться в полне рациональным: <<Нас оккупировали, мы уже проиграли, нет смысла продолжать сопротивление и этим самом усугублять ситуацию! Нам же хуже от этого! Лучше прекратить сопротивлении, начать поднимать страну и со временем вернуть её к былой славе...>>

И даже если таких людей будет очень мало, эти люди в полне смогут сдать своих и сотрудничать с оккупантами, особенно если пообещать автономность и.т.д. Особенно в странах где люди более эгоистичны рациональные и расчётливые как например на западе таких людей было бы больше.

Большинство людей может не так рады будут тому что их оккупировали и ещё их же заставляют платить за боевые потери, но каждий раз как они будут видеть взорванный танк или сбитый самолёт, они уже не будут радоваться, а задумаются, стоило ли это того? Сделает ли этот подбитый танк какую либо разницу? А ведь взорвать этот танк стоило пол зарплаты живущих в раене, или повышение цен на бензин, или детский сад был закрыт неделю или ещё что то.  И многие уже не будут так положительно относится к тем кто их пытается защитить, и скорее всего довольно быстро начнут считать что нет смысла продолжать сопротивление.

Маленькие групировки всё равно будут продолжать воевать, некоторые раде страны, некоторые раде своих интересов, но уже народе не будет так положительно к этому относится и поддерживать их, а без поддержки всё намного сложнее и их будет легче ликвидировать.

Смысл в том что к оккупантам всё равно никакого доверия нет, так что установив такой режим многое не теряется, зато создаётся плохое отношение народа к воюющем против оккупации.

Но людям мало быть против кого то, им надо так же быть за кого то, за оккупантов очевидно мало кто будет, за сопротивление тоже не выгодно стало, поэтому оккупантам надо создать якобы независимую партию/президента которые будут выступать за хорошую жизнь, прекращение насилию и оккупации. И народу будет всё равно что эта партия/президент создан(а) оккупантами они будут закрывать на это глаза и прикидываться наивными так как это всё равно лучше чем альтернативы.

Это всё конечно же можно сделать и без того что бы заставлять народ платить за ущерб нанесён оккупантам, но тогда оккупантам надо ждать и терпеть пока народу не надоест воевать и большинство не согласится с предложенной альтернативой, а это может взять и 7лет а то и больше, а если сопротивление подкармливают из вне то и дольше.

Мир в мире!

С новым годом!

Poor atheists!

I saw a small video on youtube about how atheists are the last minority (well obviously it was about US) one can still bash around, how unfair that was and how sorry we ought to feel for atheist.

I do feel sorry for those people.

Now do consider Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and other people advocating militaristic atheism, intolerance and take every opportunity to ridicule religious people, to my notice mostly christians, for their beliefs.

Now consider scandinavia, where if not already, then soon, religious people are becoming a minority. Are all those attacks from the radical atheists justified, or have they just replaced holy inquisition by atheistic one?

Certainly there is no difference, it is wrong to attack people regardless of whether they are a minority or not, but people can't just take a chill pill and talk shit out, no, people need to pick a side which they believe is better than any other side, sometime that means belonging to the majority sometimes to the minority and defend their choice often by attacking the other side, as the best defense is a good attack.

How did we get here? Tribal instinct or something.

But everyone thinks they are right...

The reason for iProducts?

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple 1997 he got the title of interim CEO, that is iCEO and 1998 we saw the first iMac later iBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad.

This might not be a surprise for people that followed Apple at that time, but for me it was an eye opener.

Were all apple products with an i in front of them Steve Jobs personal ideas? It would certainly be poetic in some cosmic kind of way.

This would mean that Apple will not launch any more products with an i in front of the name, except for maybe some vision Steve did't have time launch before he left us.

EDIT: I have been reading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, and apparently I was wrong about the i for iProducts, but it did seem plausible.

Good bye Steve Jobs!

You have made this world better.

How bad is Microsoft?

I do have an old iPhone, it is a 3G model, which surely is't the fastest one out there and many developers probably don't even consider that model any longer when developing apps, but I had no problems using Skype, it more or less worked perfectly.


The latest version for iPhone, now provided by the new owner Microsoft takes longer time to start, after it start it is unresponsive for a while, but the worst thing is the sound quality, called land line and it took some effort to be able to communicate now.


I have nothing more to add, it just got worse, surprisingly it did't crash, but that feature will probably be added in the next release.


Peace!

21 things happy people do are useless!

It is not uncommon to see such things, and I stumbled across one such list today, thinking how useless they are. By useless I mean of course as guides of things you can do to be happy, as many people interpret them. There are even people as in the comment section of original article saying "... I practice 18 of 21 things...", which is of course completely useless, and I'll try to show why:

1. Appreciate Life

Be thankful that you woke up alive each morning. Develop a childlike sense of wonder towards life. Focus on the beauty of every living thing. Make the most of each day. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Obviously happy people appreciate life, but if you are a miserable bastard you can not start appreciating life to be happy, because that is what it means when you are not happy, you don't see you in every day things. That is life seems great because you are happy, and there is no way you go about it backwards by making your self feel that things in life are great. That is if you try to be thankful that you woke up alive today and not a zombie, try to see the beauty of living things e.t.c. you simulate some aspects of being happy, and if you manage enough of them perhaps it will even seem like you are happy but you still doing it backwards i.e. simulating happiness instead of being happy. As the result it will require great deal of effort to seem happy, and sooner or later you get tiered of it feeling that all those years you'v been miserable playing the act of happiness for other people because they like you more when you are happy.

And let say you can make your self feel those things, if you can control your feelings to such extent, why not then just make your self feel happy, and all those other things like being grateful for not waking up dead will come naturally.

2. Choose Friends Wisely

Surround yourself with happy, positive people who share your values and goals. Friends that have the same ethics as you will encourage you to achieve your dreams. They help you to feel good about yourself. They are there to lend a helping hand when needed.

Yes those damn unhappy people damn them to hell, who cares about them, ignore their phone calls, be "wise", only spend time with happy people and people you can exploit for your own happiness. Those unhappy people should first of all learn to appreciate unanswered calls and messages and be happy before they can be chosen by you to be your friend.

3. Be Considerate

Accept others for who they are as well as where they are in life. Respect them for who they are. Touch them with a kind and generous spirit. Help when you are able, without trying to change the other person. Try to brighten the day of everyone you come into contact with.

Oh, ok, but how about choosing your friends, how can you choose your friends and at the same time accept people as they are? You must first judge them, who is worthy and who is not, and cut out some while embracing others, and then you can start to accept those you chose, well of.c. that will be easy since you chose people around you, provided of.c. that those people still want to be around such a judgmental bastard. But on the whole, sure, sound advice, just slight contradiction with 2.

Though there are also other contradictions, to accept other you have to learn no to give a damn about them, which then makes it difficult to help them. Respect is also a feeling, and again if you can just make your self feel things you can just make your self feel happy and cut all the crap in between. And respect is earned, if people act in such a way that they deserve no respect, non can be given. An if you are unhappy it can be difficult to brighten other peoples day. Anyway, moving on...

4. Learn Continuously

Keep up to date with the latest news regarding your career and hobbies. Try new and daring things that has sparked your interest – such as dancing, skiing, surfing or sky-diving.

That is actually good advice, interested people are interesting people, and there is no magic involved like making your self feel things on demand.

5. Creative Problem Solving

Don’t wallow in self-pity. As soon as you face a challenge get busy finding a solution. Don’t let the set backs affect your mood, instead see each new obstacle you face as an opportunity to make a positive change. Learn to trust your gut instincts – it’s almost always right.

For a change, instead of making your self feeling good things by magic, don't allow your self to feel bad things, by magic. Also learn to trust your gut instincts, which is commonly called gut feeling, and if your gut feeling tells you to lie on the couch with a bucket of ice cream in self pity, then you have a problem.

6. Do What They Love

Some statistics show that 80% of people dislike their jobs! No wonder there’s so many unhappy people running around. We spend a great deal of our life working. Choose a career that you enjoy – the extra money of a job you detest isn’t worth it. Make time to enjoy your hobbies and pursue special interests.

Sure if you have the ability to make something you enjoy more and still make ends meet it is great thing to do, which was surprising approach, it would be better if you could by magic make your self feel that you enjoy your job, and that way have money and the job you like.

7. Enjoy Life

Take the time to see the beauty around you. There’s more to life than work. Take time to smell the roses, watch a sunset or sunrise with a loved one, take a walk along the seashore, hike in the woods etc. Learn to live in the present moment and cherish it. Don’t live in the past or the future.

Oh, just go see comments of the first one, here is the magic again, enjoy life to be happy, well it's rather difficult to enjoy life when you are unhappy, that is what unhappy is. Though if one goes beyond the title the actually advices are reasonable, though learning to live in the present moment might be a life time task, and how is one to do that, study Zen? Actually not so bad idea, think nr. 7 is all right if one changes the title from meaningless "Enjoy Life" to "Study Zen".

8. Laugh

Don’t take yourself – or life to seriously. You can find humor in just about any situation. Laugh at yourself – no one’s perfect. When appropriate laugh and make light of the circumstances. (Naturally there are times that you should be serious as it would be improper to laugh.)

The difficult part is not to cry when you laugh at yourself.

9. Forgive

Holding a grudge will hurt no one but you. Forgive others for your own peace of mind. When you make a mistake – own up to it – learn from it – and FORGIVE yourself.

Once again, it is easy to say that you forgive, and there is whole other thing to truly forgive, to do that on demand you need big bag of magic, or you can pretend to be able to do all those things, and laugh to sleep every night.

10. Gratitude

Develop an attitude of gratitude. Count your blessings; All of them – even the things that seem trivial. Be grateful for your home, your work and most importantly your family and friends. Take the time to tell them that you are happy they are in your life.

A thought about how everything could be worse is a good motivation to be grateful for what you have, unless you want to use magic.

11. Invest in Relationships

Always make sure your loved ones know you love them even in times of conflict. Nurture and grow your relationships with your family and friends by making the time to spend with them. Don’t break your promises to them. Be supportive.

This is actually rather useful, as it is shown that relationships and social activities contribute to the long term happiness opposed to buying shit which you are unhappy with couple months later regardless of what it is.

12. Keep Their Word

Honesty is the best policy. Every action and decision you make should be based on honesty. Be honest with yourself and with your loved ones.

Be honest to your self, hence ignore everything said thus far except point 11 as every point 1 to 10 are only different ways to simulate the effects of happiness and trick your self to appear happy regardless of how you actually feel.

13. Meditate

Meditation gives your very active brain a rest. When it’s rested you will have more energy and function at a higher level. Types of meditation include yoga, hypnosis, relaxation tapes, affirmations, visualization or just sitting in complete silence. Find something you enjoy and make the time to practice daily.

I think Zen meditation would be suiting. It was a joke, but only partially as I think that meditation will make no sense without any background to it, and one would give up rather quickly. And by the way, the article is 21 Habits of Happy People, do all happy people meditate?

14. Mind Their Own Business

Concentrate on creating your life the way you want it. Take care of you and your family. Don’t get overly concerned with what other people are doing or saying. Don’t get caught up with gossip or name calling. Don’t judge. Everyone has a right to live their own life the way they want to – including you.

When it doesn't contradict any other point, the most important of which I thought was to invest in relationships which can be difficult when you don't give a damn about other people and always do whatever you want.

15. Optimism

See the glass as half full. Find the positive side of any given situation. It’s there – even though it may be hard to find. Know that everything happens for a reason, even though you may never know what the reason is. Steer clear of negative thoughts. If a negative thought creeps in – replace it with a positive thought.

Here come the magic again. Feeling that all is going to hell and it makes you unhappy? There is an easy fix, just feel the other way and you will be happy! But it is getting tiresome to write same thing over and over again every time there is a suggestion to feel the other way, so it this case I want to propose a view which might help to feel slightly more optimistic, though it is not invented by me, if ever anything was, anyway here it is:

Looking into human body one will find the intense struggle, of things, white blood cells killing things, bacteria, red blood cells always rushing around in a viscous circle, cells are multiplying and dying off, e.t.c. there is chaos, but looking at it on a more "zoomed out" / higher level all that struggle is something great, a human being capable of reason, laughter, invention, art e.t.c.

Well in the same way, even if you are in a struggle, on a higher level it is all part of something great.

16. Love Unconditionally

Accept others for who they are. You don’t put limitations on your love. Even though you may not always like the actions of your loved ones – you continue to love them.

Yes, not only must you be able to change your feelings toward things at will, but you must be able to love on demand as well, just use double portion of magic and it will be all right.

17. Persistence

Never give up. Face each new challenge with the attitude that it will bring you one step closer to your goal. You will never fail, as long as you never give up. Focus on what you want, learn the required skills, make a plan to succeed and take action. We are always happiest while pursuing something of value to us.

Just make sure first that whatever you are pursuing is not a carrot you will chaise your whole life, forgetting to live in the process.

18. Be Proactive

Accept what can not be changed. Happy people don’t waste energy on circumstances beyond their control. Accept your limitations as a human being. Determine how you can take control by creating the outcome you desire – rather than waiting to respond.

Well as children we think we can do anything, like touching the moon, or if we could get long enough ladder we would be able to climb to it. Our failures and knowledge makes us accept that there are certain things we can not do. Hence to accept that certain things can not be changed can be a painful process. Which is also a slippery road as some people have low self esteem and over estimate number of things which can't be changed and hence don't waste the energy. But otherwise it is rather good to get active instead of lying you your couch all day waiting for things to get better.

19. Self Care

Take care of your mind, body and health. Get regular medical check ups. Eat healthy and work out. Get plenty of rest. Drink lots of water. Exercise your mind by continually energizing it with interesting and exciting challenges.

This basically concludes the 17 and 19 as it is good to be active for happiness, and if one is too far gone it is better to start small, and there is a study somewhere showing that couple of hours of exercise is better than x amount of antidepressants pills, so this is then basically the starting point if you are unhappy, which can also be your carrot to work for.

I actually know many people doing this, always trying to get as healthy as possible, doing all kinds of different exercises, going do different meetings, eating health e.t.c. keeps them occupied, and gives some purpose to life, which might be profound as the goal of life is then life itself. Which can be a great realization, but also a pointless carrot in front of you which you chaise your whole life, suffering through 50 years of it, in order to extend it couple of more years.

20. Self Confidence

Don’t try to be someone that you’re not. After all no one likes a phony. Determine who you are in the inside – your own personal likes and dislikes. Be confident in who you are. Do the best you can and don’t second guess yourself.

Once again, easy to say be confident, but I am all out of magic at this point. Though there is one way to achieve that, and it is to spend more time with other people, friends, family, e.t.c.

21. Take Responsibility

Happy people know and understand that they are 100% responsible for their life. They take responsibility for their moods, attitude, thoughts, feelings, actions and words. They are the first to admit when they’ve made a mistake.

Begin today by taking responsibility for your happiness. Work on developing these habits as you own. The more you incorporate the above habits into your daily lifestyle – the happier you will be.

Most of all: BE TRUE TO YOURSELF.

Well then there is no advice on how to take responsibility, but I tell you where to start, next time you make a mistake and someone asks you about it, like "did you do that" or "who did that" don't start inventing ways to dodge, just say flat out, I did that if you did. Only children and people thinking like children avoid responsibility, and even if it said higher up to be more child like, it was not meant literally as 20+ year old child is just weird.

Yes take the responsibility for your happiness, just don't forget one thing which was not mentioned, sometimes you can run into bad luck and shit just happens to you, and it is very important to understand that such that one does not see external factors as personal failures and feel unhappy about them.

As the title of the article suggests things mentioned above are the things happy people do, majority of which they do because they are happy and not the other way around! Because if you are happy you don't need to do things to become happy, if you actively try to be happy this implies that you are currently unhappy, and hence the article would be called 21 things unhappy people do.

So you could of course do as the article suggest and to as many things as possible from this list of 21 things and "the happier" you will be.

But if you take the final words seriously "BE TRUE TO YOURSELF" you will of course understand that what you are doing is self deception whereby you try to produce cause by simulating the consequences, and what you are doing is dishonest primarily toward your self and all that time you are just pretending to be happy.

Though there is no way of denying that certain things above have the ability to make you happier such as investing in the relationships e.t.c.

Simply put see through what is the effect of happiness and what is the cause of happiness, and focus on the causes and don't waste your time on simulating the effect.

You know the point 18, don't waste your time on pointless things.

Being true to your self, you can never achieve cause by simulating the effect, hence don't waste your time on trying to be happy as it is utterly pointless, instead accept the futility of it, and go do something you enjoy or feel is meaningful instead of wasting your time on trying to be happy.

Now I will go make sushi, because I like sushi!

Not because happy people eat sushi!

Quote Source: 21 Habits of Happy People

Athenes Theory of Everything - With comments and thoughts.

I did't know where this will take me when I happen to stumble over this video, but I liked it and posting it here both to share my comments on it but also as a recommendation for any of you who have not yet seen it. Enjoy!

What made me write this were couple of statements in the beginning of the video with which I not so much disagreed but felt that they needed better explanation in order not to come off as misleading. As the video just started, I knew that I would't remember the objections in the same way if I waited until it was over to se if it was necessary to write them down, so I started to write down every thought I got watching it. Some might be more relevant, more relevant are in the beginning because toward the end I had nothing to object against and started to digress into irrelevant thoughts, hence if you feel bored reading my comments just stop and watch the video if you haven't done it yet.

The very first thing, statements about self awareness set me off writing dow those comments:

Certainly increased self awareness can be beneficial in many cases, but the obsession with it is not explained? Yes it will help us in the ways mentioned in the video, and also in day to day life avoid mistakes as we get more self aware of who we situation we are in, basing decisions on better greater understanding of the situation around us, but it also increases the risk for missed opportunities, when you are always self aware in a situation where you have nothing else at your disposal but intuition. That is with excessive self awareness arise situation where one overanalyzes the situation and miss opportunities. The obvious argument against my position is that if one is very self aware one can chose the opportunities as an aware choice based on rational thought instead of just stumble over them, which brings this to the next point.

In part two the benefits of self awareness are said to be the ability to alter misplaced emotions, enable self regulating parts of our brain and increases the ability to control feelings. Hence the feeling of going for something, i.e. an opportunity can be regulated together with other emotions and hence one will not "go for" an opportunity when such present itself, but instead by being very self aware identify those feelings for what they are and then try to make a conscious, rational decision on wether or not follow through. As it often happens we do not have sufficient amount on information to make such a decision. By trying to make rational decisions based on insufficient information one will probably avoid mistakes, one will also miss out on opportunities by misjudging the situation and often one will abstain from acting dude to inability to make a rational decision and at the same time being so self aware that one does not get caught up by the situation. Self regulation and and control of feelings by definition diminishes your ability to be taken over by your feelings i.e. be passionate and impulsive, and as result when people that are not self aware to same degree either get sad from mistakes they made or the happiness from stumbling into an opportunity and passionately enjoying it an excessive self aware person will suffer fewer mistakes, by reducing amount of impulsive decisions and hence also experience fewer moments of passion and miss out on more opportunities by being unable to make a rational decision.

Hence increasing self awareness can be great if you for example tend to get in trouble by being unaware of yourself or have homicidal tendencies but it is not so great with some other things such as dancing and love, where being overly self aware can make it dispassionate.

Simply put, the result of being overly self aware is grayness, without heights or lows, which is often how depression is described nowadays. Though obviously this will not be a depression due to ability to control feelings to greater extent and emotional resilience, but it will be rather close.

Therefore I disagree with the statement that one always ought to strive towards greater self awareness but instead one should strive to enough self awareness, which for many people probably is more. The problem though is that when you know that you have enough self awareness you probably already have too much of it since you have crossed the point where you are not only self aware but are also self aware of how much you are of self aware, at which point you will see yourself as being one self aware entity among other entities which are self aware to different degrees and the boundary between self and other will start to blur to a point where you might start to sacrifice your personal happiness for other people, since it does not matter, one self aware entity getting it or another, it still brings happiness to one of them.

This then changes the value system an what one perceives as happiness, self aware people certainly do find happiness in some other things otherwise it would not be distinguishable from depression, though again it will probably not be as intense, impulsive and passionate as it otherwise would. For example a person that is not very self aware might get caught up in an action movie where there is no plot at all but very cool effect, such person will be sucked in to the situation and feel the intensity of all the effects e.t.c. while a self aware person might look at it as some computer graphic on a screen and find it utterly boring, being self aware as he or she is and unable to get drawn into it, such person might instead enjoy a movie where there is an interesting plot and some twist such that he can be self aware of himself sitting there and just watching at something on the screen, but at the same time ponder what is meant by that and that way get caught up in it instead, but this is not as intense as living through all the action other people are able to.

Therefore even if there exist sources for happiness for self aware people it brings less intense joy as being caught up in the moment and more of general wellbeing. Perhaps with sufficiently high degree of self awareness all kinds of entertainment which exists today will be boring and such person will only find joy in actually living it in the real life instead of watching it on the screen i.e. becoming that hero but in real life.

But is it not what we all are already doing? Just that different people have different heros, some strive for increased self awareness, some for enlightenment, some to help other people other for physical pleasure, yet other for money, e.t.c. That is indefinitely striving to increase self awareness will eventually end up in the same thing. Same thing but different.

Before I studied Zen, mountains were mountains, and water was water.

After studying Zen for some time, mountains were no longer mountains, and water was no longer water.

But now, after studying Zen longer, mountains are just mountains, and water is just water.

Master Qingyuan in the Compendium of the Five Lamps

I have no of course elaborated far more on the initial small remark I wrote while I was watching the video, and it stretched far beyond the point I wanted to make that increased self awareness comes at a cost and therefore is nothing one should take lightly, and especially not forced on anyone.

Well this is actually the only critical remark I had, well it is not so much critical perhaps as a elaboration such that it is clear that such drastic transformations of one self will not result in everything as it is but better, but things will actually be different. I wrote something similar earlier in a post called "You can be wise but why?", and this is probably why I reacted when it was said in the video that you should strive for increased self awareness, because it is similar to if someone said that one always should strive to become wiser.

Wat comes below has very vague relation to the video, and contains no further comments on it but are couple of thoughts I got while watching it.

In the beginning of the video it was said that the environment around us and what we experience changes the physical structure of our brain, this reminded me about something i wrote earlier, namely the "importance of language".

What I wrote was that certain languages are more rich and flexible containing not only words but also whole concepts which might not be present at all in other languages. That is you might get more rich experience from one language compared to another, which inevitably changes your brain structure as mentioned in the video, as every experience does. As we use language to communicate, describe the environment around us, and constantly think all day long, it might have greater impact on our brain than the environment itself, since the environment might be the same for the greater part of the life, i.e. work, home, family, friends, nearest pub e.t.c. and occasionally vacation somewhere, what we think in the language we know changes all the time, because we get bored thinking about same thing all the time and think about something else, hence the better we know the language, more expressive it is, the more accurate and rich representation of the concept we get in our mind of the thing we think about, i.e. equivalent to being in more stimulating environment, but in our head and all the time.

Also we might change the environment based on what and how we think, let say our emediate environment such as buying new things for the new apartment, as we are more able to think with many concepts and in more flexible ways, we might affect the environment in more stimulating ways which in turn will affect our brain structure, and the brain structure of our guests.

For example let say your language have one word and one concept of a cup, i.e. a cup is something to hold liquid such as tea or coffee, then you might go out to the store, buy any cup which looks nice and be done with it. Now compare to an imaginary language which don't only have one word, cup, but different words for each different kind of cup, which are intended for all different kind of beverages. When a person speaking such language goes to the store he or she will consider different cups because the not cup but X is for tea and the Y is for coffee and W is for green tea and that person might buy at least two different ones one for tea and one for coffee. Even in this simple cases one person will have more variety at home with different shapes of cups each has different name and purpose, compared to another person which just have a generic thing called cup used to hold any liquid and perhaps even juice if there is no distinction in the concept between glass and cup in that particular language, clearly less stimulating environment for the brain.

But as languages changes us and we change the environment and the environment changes us and we evolve the language it is the chicken and the egg problem. Writing among other things such as agriculture e.t.c. are said to be the founding blocks for civilizations, but before there is writing there must be language, and things to be written must be thought of in that language, hence language to some extent shapes the civilization, people living in that civilization are then inevitably influenced by it, and hence language shapes the environment which shapes peoples brains, which in turn shape the environment.

As I began to write this I had no interesting point to make except for the fact that language also shapes our brains, but as I wrote remembered one thing which fits here very well and I think is rather profound in the given context. Namely, when does a foreigner stops being foreigner?

To that question we find answer in Slavic history, and actually in the definition of the word itself:

The Slavic autonym Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo "word," originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)," i.e. people who understand each other, in contrast to Slavic word denoting "foreign people" – němci, meaning "mumbling, murmuring people" (from Slavic němъ – "mumbling, mute"). The latter word may be the derivation of words to denote German/Germanic people in many later Slavic languages: e.g., Polish Niemiec, Ukrainian Німець, Czech Němec, Russian and Bulgarian Немец, Serbian Nemac, Bosnian and Croatian Nijemac etc.^[9]

Wikipedia

That is Slavic people were not distinguished from other by race or geography e.t.c. but by language, if you had the word (Slovo) then you were Slavic, you spoke same language, in contrast to foreigners i.e. mute people, Nemci.

As argued in length above that language and the environment are probably two of the major factors shaping ones brain this I think is a very profound way of determining when forgetters stop being foreigners.

Why is the language better way to determine wether someone is foreigner or not opposed to say religion, race, hair color, shape of the nose or any other arbitrary attribute? Because you can not change your race, or any other physical attribute, well one could color ones hair, and one could change the religion but that would only have symbolic value. The language on the other hand is the most powerful way of interaction, when a person knows the language well enough to communicate freely with others in their own words and concepts they will inevitably influence and learn from each other and eventually finding a common ground, and they will be more similar on the physical level as well, namely where it matters, in the brain, where thinking is going on.

Many governments have apparently realized this long before me and force foreigners to undergo a test to determine wether they know the language well enough before giving citizenship which is just a formal way to do it. And I think regular people should learn from it, i.e. stop differentiating people based on arbitrary attributes, but if a person lives in this country and speaks its language, then that person is not a foreigner.

I am quite tiered now and have been writing for many hours and it is now morning, so I might have missed something, so if there are any objections to the idea that a person stops being foreigner when he or she has learned the language I would like to hear them in the comments, until that time I will consider it to be a profound idea and follow it in daily life.

I'm going to finish this post before I go to sleep, no time to waste so I continue with the next thing which came to my mind watching the video.

The video described a somewhat similar idea I had several months ago when they say that sociologists have established that phenomena such as obesity and smoking, emotions and ideas spread and ripple through society in much the same way that electric signals of neurons are transferred when their activity is synchronized. That we are global network of neurochemical reactions...

That idea did not came to me all at once but in small bits, so I wrote it down as I usually do on the first thing I had at hand, and in the language I am thinking in at the time, which is determined by the language I used most recently, and as I often watch videos or read something online it is often in english, and hence the majority of my posts are in english. Though the consequence of writing a post from a number of small ideas which came to me over a period of time is that they are spread out over several files on my computer and also spread out in different places in a file among other ideas, and parts of it are in my phone and they are written in three different languages, in the end I never got around to merging it all to one post, and later forgot about it.

I will try to merge all that to one post later, but a short version is this: I was not thinking in notion of neurons and not about some grand scheme of setting off chain reactions but in the small scale of one person influencing others in a rather straight forward way, which can be visualized as ripples on water .

The idea is about how our influence propagate starting from our closest friend and family, and spread further as ripples in the water, to friends of friends and friends of friends of friends e.t.c. Of course as further away from your immediate surrounding the less influence you have, i.e. influence you have on your friend will be adopted by that friend and when that friend influences another parts of your influence will be there as well but in much smaller degree, e.t.c. Hence the ripples in water analogy as they spread from the source, i.e. you, they get weaker.

This happens also in time, if you have children of your own, part of you, the way you influence your child, will live on in that child and propagate to others in a time when you are far gone. Same thing happens if you for example spend much time with a friend you will influence that friend changing him or her in some way, and if he has a child this influence will be reflected it the way that child is brought up.

The second half blew me away completely due to the big black hole my knowledge where physics and chemistry should reside, and required great amount of concentration on my part just to follow what was being said, but still it seamed interesting. I also paused quite a bit to write things down, so as I think back I can't really remember much of it or what was said, and perhaps even have misinterpreted some things in my comments. But I'll try to watch it again later when I am less tiered and distracted by my own thoughts.

Let children play!

Don't let children act however they want or do whatever they want, just let them play!

Letting children do anything they want prevents them from developing the important lesson of self constraint for the noble cause.

Not letting them play prevents children from interacting with environment and learning from it, and hopefully when that child grows up he or she will have played enough to start focusing on other things in life.

In todays increasingly liberal society where anything goes it is desirable for children to have learned the ability to do the right thing for long term gain even though it might reduce their short term pleasure, the maturity to know what the right thing is, and the experience of having made the mistakes.

By letting a child do whatever a child want and preventing that child from playing by for example forcing that child to sit at home and learn one will have a grown up person that will keep doing whatever he or she wants regardless of circumstances, trying to catch up on all the play and fun he or she missed out on as a child, with no experience of playing.

It is obvious that learning to play as adult, with adult toys, in liberal society, mistakes one will make and hurt self and others as one inevitably does when playing is much more dangerous than games children play.

Don't call people animals!

It is popular by atheists, to call humans for animals, to point out the evolution from the lower life forms and not created as an entity of itself outside of the animal kingdom.

Despite evolution, it is still wrong to call humans for animals. Being call an animal is commonly used as an insult, and it is a great barrier for many to overcome and abandon a religion when those pesky atheists keeps insisting on calling one an animal. Many people therefore retain the belief of some sort of something somewhere because they feel that they are not animals, and in extreme cases evolution is denied for this simple reason.

Why it is insult to be called an animal and which role religion played in it is irrelevant. Because the difference between humans and the rest of animal kingdom is big and observable by all, namely the difference in intellect, and this unique human trait intuitively make us separate "them" (stupid animals) from "us" intelligent humans.

Because we have as "intelligent" humans a tendency to separate "us" from "them" and every time one have to face "us" being not all that different from "them" after all it creates a problem.

Today we are not able to overcome the racial barriers, we still view each other as "us" and "them" and not "we the people", not even that even within same country there are always "us" and "them", it is everywhere. And when we are not able to overcome it between us humans where the difference is so small, how can we expect people to relate to the "animals" as "us" and not "them" when the difference is so great?

Perhaps one day we will reach the level when we accept our selfs as animals to our selfs, will feel unity with the earth from which we came, and live in some new age paradise, but until then it is better to tell people that we evolved to "human". I.e. keep the separation between different kinds of animals, so that this feeling of "us" agains "them" is preserved until the facts sink in.

Simply put, this is the transitional form from "creatures of god" to "animals", which is currently the missing.

This though, as written earlier does not justify any behavior with motivation "we are just animals" because you are the animal with a brain capable of more then other animals. As an ape does't think "i am just an animal" and then go an drown in the nearest lake trying to act like a fish. So should you not think "I am just an animal" and go acting like an ape in the streets.

// End of rambling

Oppose perfect society

We all want to live in an perfect society, where there is no crime, and everyone are happy.

Recently there are trends all over the world especially in the west towards increased surveillance of its citizens in the name of security and law enforcement. One step closer to perfect society, where there is no crime or terrorism. Happiness is some other department apparently or your own problem, anyway:

The strongest argument agains increased surveillance is often one of the privacy, which is usually counteracted with "if you don't have anything to hide, you should not worry", to which there is an usual counterargument of "the information can get into wrong hands".

Even though those arguments agains increased surveillance are good they don't touch the fundamental problem of it all and there are therefore no real observable change in the policies, increased surveillance of citizens is on the march in many countries, to prevent terrorism, to prevent piracy, to prevent crime, or anything which needs preventing.

But the problem is not about wrong people getting hold of the information, because it is unintended, and everyone arguing for the increased surveillance will claim that it will never happen, the problem is in "right people", striving for the perfect society, having this information.

Because who are the "right people"? It is predominantly the government. Government is also the entity shaping the future of the society and exercising power over people. Government of the people, for the people, went out the window when it made it's first decision or law not supported by the majority of the people.

There are certain thing we don't want anyone to know, certain thing we have already forgotten or would rather forget. All of us has some things we don't want anyone to know about, something we are not proud of, or mistakes we have made, it doesn't necessary have to be something illegal.

Hence as the surveillance spreads such things get increasingly difficult to conveniently forget, more and more data about you are recorded in different ways, depending on the country you live in. As storage get cheaper more information can be stored for longer time.

And as the trend continues you loose the control over the information, your ability to choose what you don't want to disclose diminishes with increased surveillance, and instead becomes a matter of necessity for looking it up, i.e. the government will have a way to just look up people of interest and get the information about them from all the different sources which are available to them.

The sources might vary from county to country and you can probably dig up somewhere the ways your government monitors you citizens.

Having enough information stored about you it is always possible to make a case against you. It is just a matter of having enough of different ways to gather accurate information. At this point there might not be any country capable of doing this.

But as technology evolves it becomes possible to store information such as medical record, financial record e.t.c. for long period of time and get accuracy by for example face recognition on CCTV cameras, movement tracking, vehicle tracking by registering number plates on traffic cameras, or simply gps tracking, phone record of people you have been in contact with, record of people you emailed, keywords used in search engine, websites visited, e.t.c.

Even if you haven't driven too fast at any time in your life, smoked a joint, done some undeclared work e.t.c. is there nothing in your life that would be possible to classify as antisocial behavior?

If a girl/boy/woman/man knew everything about you on the first date, would you get a second?

If employer knew everything about you, would you get the job you have?

If the government knew everything about you, would you be viewed as a good citizen today?

Have you lived a perfect life? No? Then oppose "perfect society" when government promises it. Because in such society there is no room for you.

Being experienced is risky, but you can keep faking it

When a boy begins to shave, he is unexperienced, indecisive, his hand shakes, and he will cut himself. Only when he gets experienced he will become decisive, and will act with certainty, this is when he stoops shaking and hurting himself.

No matter how bad at shaving you are in the beginning, it is not feasible to avoid it, hence you will get better. But there are other situations here in life, when people go around avoiding things they want to do due to this fear and indecisiveness, hence never getting better at it, never getting what they want.

Sometimes it's hard to try something new, but think about if you really want it, and if you do, go for it once, you might get cut, but let it heal and try again, if you still want it. Make sure you don't intensionally cut others in the process, because whatever is useful experience for you, might not be useful for someone else, since people are at different places in life.

An indecisive and uncertain person is a person always in fear of trying something new, and therefore not having the experience to be certain when posed with a decision or a question. More likely to avoid it all together, just sinking deeper into swamp of indecisiveness.

But don't confuse the indecisiveness with the profound "Meh", when person has so much experience he is so wise he sees no difference between the trivial things you might consider of importance, such as which movies is the best one, what tastes better, which car is better e.t.c.

Don't be afraid to take the first step and act on it, guess what is right if you don't know it or can't learn it from other peoples mistakes, if you are wrong you will find out. We are all living in a world of fools, the only difference is that majority are afraid to admit it and show it, and those that do are the only ones who do get wiser. That is, instead of getting wiser, we are trying harder to hide our foolishness, hence everyone around seem increasingly wiser, while in reality only accomplish it by hiding the true self, but also by avoiding doing risky things and getting truly wiser. Hence the disconnect between what is perceived and how it really is just keeps increasing, and it gets increasingly difficult to make the first step, because it seems that everyone around you are flawless.

Hence we find us increasingly disconnected form the world around us, seemingly not fitting in, and generally failing at it, creating the foundation for depression. And also why we have difficulty trusting other people, because we do no know if what we see is truly so or if it only is a mask to deceive us.

But if you can play that game, avoid taking risk, avoiding getting hurt, leaning form mistakes and instead are able to put on the appearance of being experienced, why should you take the hard path?

You can be wise, but why?

What is beyond knowledge and matter?

As early homo sapiens smashed things to achieve something, as stones were smashed together to create sharp stone tools, and fire, so did modern man split atoms, and then protons in order to understand matter.

Fire often represents knowledge, first step towards modern man. Now we have attained knowledge and scientific method and we move on to smashing and splitting things in order to understand matter.

In an unimaginable future far from now, when we have understood matter, what it is and where it comes from, what will we smash then, to understand what?

Without love, arrange divorce.

Arranged marriages are the ting of the past, arranged divorces are the thing of today.

To the extent of my limited knowledge in the subject I think that arranged marriages were practiced everywhere in the world at some point in time.

Though today many cultures have moved away from the traditions of arranges marriages in an attempt to find the life partner based on love and personal preferences, it is figured it to be the better choice.

Though when people get married or move in together, practical problems arise, and compromises need to me made, and eventually one will slide down into the problem of making it fair and balanced, start to arrange who does what and when, this is the first sign of the path to divorce, since at this point the discussion is not about "us" but about "me" vs. "you".

If you really love a person, you should naturally be willing to assist and make life better for that person, this also includes not burdening your loved one unnecessary. If both partners love each other and act accordingly, both will have the other one at their side in time of need, and neither will feel exploited.

If neither acts with love towards each other, but instead the life together is arranged and scheduled, neither will have their parter at their side in time of need, because such times can not be scheduled ahead, both will try to negotiate a better deal for themselves so that they don't feel exploited by the other, and where is the love in that?

When we figure out that not only marrying by love but also living together by love is better than arranging a life together we will observe fewer divorces.

Умные не запускаются!

Насколько человек умный определяется степени углубления в выбранном им направление!

Например, физик, ботаник, будет выглядеть очень умным среди других академиков так как он проводит большинство своего времени зубря гранит науки, но в социальной среде он будет выглядеть очень глупым не зная что сказать девушке которая ему нравится, так как он учил физику вместо того чтобы разговаривать с людьми и учится общению.

Как не крути, время у людей не безграничное и тратя его на одно мы невольно ограничиваем себя в другом.

Так вот, умный не тот кто ударился в одно направления и знает об этом больше чем все присутствующие, а тот кто знает когда углубления в одном направление начинает вредить другим аспектам жизьни, то есть не запускается.

I think, therefore I have a problem!

Well the idea is rather simple, if we think and have no problems to think about, thinking quickly becomes unnecessary, hence we find entertainment which either keeps us from thinking or which creates artificial problems for us to solve. Which is also the two types of entertainment we commonly call higher form of entertainment, and lower form of entertainment.

On the other hand when we think usually it involves some problem, if now, even if we only daydream that dream usually is no all perfect but has some problems which we solve or if you fail in your daydreams, that might be a sign of depression perhaps.

It also seems, though I have not seen any studies on the topic, that we are, and historically have been focused on solving one particular problem, where to get more wealth or stuff, hence previous attempts of tackling the problem has been of the form, "do not desire", and to do that one sits in meditation where one does not think at all, hence solves no problems, at least intensionally.

From this we get our eternal greed, where by achieving one goal or getting one thing, we soon start wanting another or thinking about next step, solving next problem, because we do think, we think a lot, an all those thoughts need to be focused on something.

Why do we always think about problems though? Well that could probably be explained in evolutionary terms, since everyone strive to survive and reproduce we often get stuck on hoarding material goods having the evolutionary impulse that having more and piling up will help survival, while in fact in todays society, that often gets people in debt since piling up is not about hunting or gathering anymore, but comes with a price tag attached. Hence people often think about what to get next and how to get it, or if they have no problems with getting it, they worry about their credit card running hot.

The second evolutionary impulse to reproduce, often is in conflict with the first, since we are conditioned with the importance of having a good and well paying job, and buying lots of stuff for ourselves, children often are always seen as a problem, preventing you from buying more stuff for yourself.

Hence we don't only have two problems, how to get more stuff, and how to reproduce, but we also have the third and very difficult problem of how to achieve the one and still not loose the other, and we are all romantic and such today, so third problem is added, not only finding means to reproduce but also doing it with one you love and not by arrangement, and not only that by also with a partner that also loves you.

But that only shows that people do have problems to think about, that is not the same as saying that if people think then they have problems. Let's imagine a counterexample, one person in the world that thinks freely, has no problems, and ye't doesn't create or think about problems. I can't, but lets take Dalai Lama one would think that there is no better example, but even he has a schedule, which he follows, going to different places, teaching people about happiness and other ideas, and is't it the greatest problem of them all, educating the masses?

Well then, from all this there are couple of things one could consider, first of all the problem keeping you sleepless at nights might not be a real problem as such but something you yourself created in order to have something to think about, or that the problem is real but is more of a comfort thing and not necessity hence should not take priority over other stuff, and lastly if it is a real problem that requires real deep though, well then be happy that you are capable of thinking, a cat would never have been able to solve that.

And in order to avoid creating artificial problems for oneself, or to avoid compulsively thinking about some utterly pointless problem, get a hobby, meet people, do something with your creativity, and you might notice that you have less problems.

Basically, spend less time thinking about tomorrow, it is our advantage as humans and does help us to survive but overdoing it also reduces our live to mere survival. And since you can't stop thinking, there is no point in telling someone "stop worrying" but instead one needs to find something to think about, hence the advices above.

Sweden is one of the leading countries when it comes to suicide, it is also a country with good welfare, high social protection and in general rather good standard of living. And I think that having few problems in life, that is enjoying high standard of living creates the problem of what to do with all the spare brainpower not used for solving problems in daily life, and if no one provides a problem people will invent their own, and no one knows how to create such a problem that will occupy your mind for years and maybe for the whole life but yourself.

Hence it the end, everything above can be summarize as one unexplained thought:

Find a way to occupy your mind, or your mind will occupy itself!