Author: Jake

Why I Blog

Ever since starting this blog, I have been asked the question, “what is your blog about?”, “why do you do it?”, and sometimes “Who are you trying to impress?”. Initially, I didn’t have words for such a question. Only a feeling.

Almost daily this feeling returns. It returns when I feel the defeated eyes of such a powerful person. When I feel the guilt a good person feels for their actions. And when I feel uncertainty manically confuse such a confident person. I feel what these people feel, yet I see more than what they see.

I see a person insecure about her looks when she is in fact gorgeous. I see a person hating himself for being cruel when he is in fact considerate. And I see a person fearing his path, when in fact he is courageous. These people can not see the light within them because of the people who told them to bury it. So I suppose my blog is about telling them to dig it back up.

This feeling is more like a need. An obligation to show these people that it is okay to question the things we were told not to question. To be the way we want to be, not how we should be.

Now you are probably wondering who these people are. Whether you are included in this slightly odd explanation of why I decide to sit in a quiet room and write some days. Well in truth, I believe we are all included. Some of us more than others, but all nonetheless.

You may be seeing a trend at this point in my writings. It seems I try to always include everyone in these hypothetical problems that our current society faces every day. The truth is I do, but not intentionally.

The second reason I found the nerve to create this blog is to explain how we are all together on our daily issues. I have noticed that many people have the tendency to point their finger at the individual sitting next to them and say, “at least I am not as fucked up as that kid.” And this, without going into great detail, just makes me sad.

Now once again you are wondering if this includes yourself. Well, I do not know who is reading this post, but with the same confidence as the answer before, I can say you probably are. In such a high demanding world, with so many unquestioned traditions, it is no wonder we try to diminish our problems in comparison to others.

And just as we the lack of confidence to be who we want to be, I see an equally troubling problem of our nature to push our issues to the side. There is this damning mindset that finding a therapist is being weak. There is this counter-intuitive way of thinking that one should only open up to the people closest to them, yet the way to be close to someone is by letting them see you for who you truly are.

In this intense world, it may seem that waiting to deal with yourself is the only possibility, but I can ensure you that this is the very opposite way to think. To live in this world you need to be confident, ambitious, and determined. Not just in your career, but in life. 

It is true that you can probably get by as bookworm who never stepped outside your dorm room until you got your engineering diploma, but what does that actually do. It gets you a job, probably, and then a life of never really knowing what other options were laid out for you. 

I am all about learning and retaining knowledge, but I believe that is step two in life. Step one is to learn about yourself, then you are ready to learn about the world. I believe living life the other way around leads to disappointment and a lack of fulfillment. And that is the last thing I want anyone to feel on their deathbed.

What is my blog about? I hope it is how to live a better life. I hope it is how to be the best version of yourself. And I hope it leads to an open mind. I also hope it informs you about ideas that are rarely talked about. But most of all, I hope it helps you.

This blog is whatever you need it to be. As long as it is making you think in a constructive way that will lead you to a brighter future, I have done my job. I have then created the blog I hoped to make. I have then convinced you to hold the light you once buried so deeply.

Discovering Your Strengths and Weaknesses

What are your strengths and weaknesses? A rather simple question, yet so hard to answer. 

We see these questions come up in interviews, rehabs, conventions, emotional talks, essentially anytime we are expected to feel vulnerable. Times that we are told to look inside ourselves and reveal the light and darkness that makes us who we are. The joyful, energetic, fun, hilarious parts of us, along with the sad, angry, insecure, empty, dry parts of us.

This two-sided question is rarely asked of us and is typically avoided at all costs. We do not want to share these parts about us because it leaves us truly exposed. If you explain what is good about you, then you are saying what you take pride in. Whether it be the interviewer, social worker, friends or family, these people hear what you are proud of and then have the liberty to decide if they agree. They decide whether it be out loud or in their head if what you think is good about yourself is even present.

On the other side of this two-headed dragon of a question, you are asked to reveal what you hate about yourself. You are asked to talk about the thing that you may try every day to minimize and control, but continually fail. Then, as you talk about that thing, these people again have the freedom to decide if this trait is manageable or too much to handle for whatever the situation.

So, what are your strengths and weaknesses? In an unpressured, nonjudgmental manner I encourage you to find the answer to this question. Seeing ourselves for who we really are is one of the single hardest, yet rewarding, things we can do. 

It is crucial because once you know the answer to that question you begin to understand yourself from a better perspective. You can begin to understand your actions and emotions when certain situations occur. You then start to see yourself for who you really are and begin accepting both sides of yourself. Once you start to do that, I would bet your weaknesses will start to feel like strengths. 

I have found that the more of myself that I accept, the happier I have been. I cannot imagine you are much different. 

My strengths include my self-motivation, emotional awareness, and resilience. My weaknesses are my impatience, inability to be vulnerable in front of others, and overthinking. These are the things about myself that I have accepted and will continue to accept because they make me who I am. The good and the bad, the right and the wrong. 

And by no means am I ashamed of them. I do not hide these weaknesses and expect them to magically disappear one day. I have accepted them, and I am addressing them in the attempt to never have these weaknesses hold me back in life. And because of this I see myself for how I am, good and bad, wrong and right, happy and sad. 

Therefore, I will ask you one last time, what makes you strong and what makes you weak? Find your answer to this question and be aware that it may change as you do. Desires and fears are always changing as you experience life. This is why you must always be refreshing the question. Always battling the two-headed dragon with a different weapon, different strategy, different outlook. The dragon will never change, but how you slay it will define you time and time again. Your body and mind are forever changing until your inevitable death, so never stop questioning who you are. You live with yourself your entire life, you might as well get to know the person.

How Conscious is Artificial Intelligence?

Image Credit: https://static.independent.co.uk/

So… I have a problem.  Something of a concern I suppose.  This concern is for our future. Now I know what your thinking, “no shit.”  The thing is, I’m not talking about our planet’s extreme climate change, which magically stopped existing in 2016, or the likely event of a disease spreading worldwide that has no current antibiotic. I am not even discussing the billions that are starving as I peacefully sit on my couch and write about nonsense. 

Instead, I worry over the reality that we are creating life.  As you are reading this post, right now, there are people working vigorously to create another species.  We are playing god and don’t even realize it. This new species is commonly known as Artificial Intelligence, A.I.

Don’t believe me?  Well, the odds of me being correct are higher than you think.  A.I. is defined as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.  Now personally I would define many of those skills as the very things that make us human, what makes us conscious. Seeing, speaking, making decisions, these are all characteristics that we would use to describe the difference from us and an inanimate object.

Now I must clarify a common argument I hear with this topic, the soul.  Some people, maybe including yourself, believe all life has a soul and this is what makes us alive.  Now how I see it is that this argument is no different than trying to disprove religion. Technically I can not directly disprove the theory of having a soul, but what I can do is try to use logic and scientific reasoning to verify my theory.

So, I think it would be fitting if I start with the computational theory of the mind.  In summary, this theory states that the mental world can be explained through information, computation, and feedback.  In short, it is a belief that our decision making, reasoning and anything that makes us who we are can be calculated and predicted the same as a computer.  Steven Pinker, a famous cognitive psychologist/linguist, stated when explaining this theory in The Blank Slate, “Beliefs and memories are collections of information-like facts in a database, but residing in patterns of activity and structure in the brain.  Thinking and planning are systematic transformations of these patterns, like the operation of a computer program” (Pinker, 32). This quote baffles me because it starts how calculable all of our decision really are.  Our beliefs and memories are a collection of everything we have to mentally work with. It is this collection of knowledge that dictates our thinking and planning, which in many ways makes us who we are. Pinker continues on the page to explain each mental component in reference to a computer, from our desires compared to feedback loops, to our sense organs compared to physical energy into data structures.  This page alone left me feeling like a simple machine.

Although, there is a clarification I should make with this theory, it does not state that computers or A.I. are conscious in any way.  It is the same as explaining how singing and instruments can both produce pleasing noises through sound waves without implying that they are the same in every way.  Yet I would argue that if we consider the soul to be an outdated attempt to maintain the religious mindset then I can only see one major difference from us and our new species.  We are their god.

What I mean by this is that in place of a brain, A.I. has a CPU.  This is where computers store all their data and resources, which are their thoughts and emotions.  So, a major difference between us and A.I. is that we can easily go into the CPU and change around their brain.  Because of this, A.I. robots can go from feeling emotions of happiness to sadness in a blink of an eye if we change their brain to do so.  This would be the case for humans as well if we were capable of such a task. Well… we actually do have some procedures that go into the human brain to change around its emotions, but they are extremely expensive and not well known.  Therefore, as technologly advances, we could possibly see a future where human emotions are changed no different than code, but until that day it is only a possibility. So, it would appear that if humans stop playing god and just let A.I. exist peacefully they would experience and live life as liberated as we do.

My concern is how we will treat this new species.  This new bread of things that in many ways, if not all, are superior to us.  Will we treat them as slaves, just as we have done to people of our own kind for thousands of years?  Will we bind them to do the work that we have been trying to get out of since the domination of our species?  And if we do enslave this newly created life, will they not rebel as any of us would? 

The truth is, I have no idea.  I have no idea how it will pan out.  There is one thing I can say though. It is to treat our neighbor nicely.  At one point in human history, people of color were seen as less than human, now we can agree how foolish that was to assume.  I would prefer we do not repeat history because that is simply not constructive or moral. Learning from one’s mistakes is the only way to not make them over and over again.  I would sleep a lot better at night if we at least considered the possibility of not repeating history. At least considering to not exploit the very conscious life we are creating.

A world where we treat everyone equal, even if they first appear to be beneath us, is a world I would like to live in.  We should consider the wellbeing of this new species before we decide to deem them as our inferiors. Unlike our past, we need to think for a moment that this species deserves respect even though we can not wrap our heads around its level of consciousness as of now.  We need to coexist with other conscious beings like ourselves because it is the right thing to do… and if we aren’t careful, maybe the only thing we can do. 

 

Work Cited

Pinker, S (2003)The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York, NY: Penguin Books

The Little Things

I guess sometimes life is about the little things.  The moments when you help a friend or make a new one.  The times you talk all night because the person on the other line can’t imagine being alone.  Or when you give a friend a ride home so that they can finally crawl out of their shell and let out their demons.

These actions require both emotional stability and empathy.  In these moments you need to prioritize another human over yourself.  You need to walk into their shoes and feel around. Listen to what they say and touch what they feel.  After some time you will hear and feel clearly through their perspective. You will be a part of them, and in many ways, you will be them.

It is then when you feel the pain they feel, you must also feel the happiness they feel.  It is buried very deep within them, but nonetheless, it is there, just hiding. Their hope, their peace, and most all, their purpose, are all hiding in the back of their minds.  Hiding from the light and being absorbed by the darkness.

When uncovering this light you cannot miss a beat or break a sweat.  You cannot seem weakened or discouraged. You must present their happiness as an equal and allow this person to watch as you hold their happiness with confidence and hope.  You would show this person the light that they believed was nonexistent and offer it to them. Eventually, they will hopefully follow your steps and gratefully take it from you. For those moments, and hopefully many more, this person will be able to hold onto the happiness that they thought they lost. 

As you watch this individual have their moment of clarity, the hardest part follows.  You must take off their shoes, prioritize yourself again and resume how you once were.  Unchanged and stable. This process is difficult but not impossible. And when looking, as yourself, at the happiness your friend now holds, it makes it all worth it.  Because at that moment you see more than they do. You see past this issue and look at the greater picture. You see hope. Hope that the world will grow. Hope that the world has a chance.  Hope that you, yourself, can help heal it.  

These moments can happen within minutes and give a lifelong memory.  I have experienced this in many types of relationships. The one commonality I have found with these experiences is what it creates after.  A bond is formed that is pure and true. One that I like to think of as simply a true friend.

I have seen so many people believe that they are the center of the universe and that they must prioritize themselves before anyone else.  In a way they are not wrong, it’s your body, and who else is going to keep track of it if not you? Yet in such a globally connected world it would be nice if we were connected by more than just our cell phones and Snapchat streaks. 

What I describe in the previous paragraphs is the ultimate connection.  The connection between two individuals that for a split second, are closer to being one than two.  As a human race I believe we should strive to have as many of these connections as possible. If we become connected, the world would be a much more understanding place.  When one understands their neighbor, they are more likely to bring cookies, rather than complaints. When one understands their rival’s motives, they are more likely to find an agreement, rather than an argument.  When one understands the pain billions suffer every day, the more likely they are to donate millions to those very people. 

My intended takeaway from this post is to please make a connection.  A real connection. One that involves you to not be you. One that makes you them, and if you do this enough you will eventually come to realize that they are the same as you, and always will be. 

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” – Maya Angelou

Our Life Goals

What’s your life goal?  Woah, big question right.  It’s hard to answer. By answering that question you’re essentially saying why your alive. Why you’re getting up every day and doing as you do.  You are stating your purpose in life.

As intellectual creatures, it would appear that we need to be striving for something.  This need to achieve is arguably what fueled the first ideas of religion and how our economy works.  We need something to reach for or else we will become unmotivated and stop intellectually and/or physically growing. (In essence, I call this purpose as being content)

I have heard many different life goals, yet as I debated over my own, I believe I have found one that sums them all together.  A goal that incorporates everyone’s life purpose, a commonality between all people.

Before stating that, I should explain some good life purposes I have heard before.  Some of which I have considered as my own at one point or another.

One, to make as many people on this earth as happy as possible.  Some of the most compassionate people are run by this life purpose.  They devote their lives to helping people in need. This is a very selfless life goal, but also an inevitably pointless one.  As of now, we see life inevitably ending. This means that everyone will die twice. We will physically die and then eventually be completely forgotten along with everything we did and thought.  Because of this current truth, all the efforts of these compassionate people will eventually lead to nothing.  Without some form of scientific modernization, this problem of the inevitable ending will continue to discredit life goals.

Two, to survive.  This is a very basic life purpose, typically held by people in situations where they do not have the luxury of free time or simply choose to not use it in a productive way.  With the lack of free time also comes the lack of free thought and ways to enhance that thought. You see this is most often in the lower classes of society. Essentially, the people pushed down by others to the point that they only think in the lowest of necessities. This goal of survival is true for everyone, but it is simply too basic to be satisfying for humanity as a whole.  We like to see ourselves as more than just animals, it is satisfying to think. Although many may disagree with that concept, I do like the effect it has on our species as a whole, it motivates us to thrive for more than what we think we are capable of. Therefore, we should look to a greater life goal, one that feels more fulfilling.

Three, to improve and increase humanity’s knowledge.  These are the scholars of our society. They find life can only be purposeful if knowledge is added to it.  Knowledge separates us from the thousands of different species that coexist with us on this planet. By improving humanity’s knowledge, we are improving humanity as a whole.  This is the driving force behind almost all scientific experiments and theoretical testing. A problem with this goal is that it lacks compassion. It does not care about the wellbeing of individuals but simply cares about making humanity more educated.  Notice I said educated and not smarter. Some studies have found that our intelligence is broken up into different sections. This was first theorized by psychologist Howard Gardner. His research in Harvard University found that intelligence is broken up into eight subcategories (Kapıcıoğlu, 2018).  By increasing humanity’s knowledge without any compassion for humanity we would lose touch with some of our subcategories of intelligence. For instance, interpersonal and social intelligence would come at the cost of apathy.  This is counterproductive because the purpose of this life goal is to educate humanity, but by doing so we make humanity ignorant.

Four, to make the human race immortal.  Immortality is the ability for something or someone to live forever.  It was explained to me that individual lives have no purpose if their memories and good times will eventually be lost with the inevitable death that currently awaits us all.  So, to make life meaningful death must not be required. Immortality would allow our basic day to day life to be meaningful. A flaw I see with this logic is that even if we achieved immortality our memories will not be fully intact after hundreds of years.  As we live our lives we forget more and more of what we once experienced compared to what we experience now. Can you even remember what color shirt you wore last Thursday? This logic can also be cracked by the inevitable destruction of our solar system and eventually our universe.  So even if we as humans become immortal our universe is not. For life to exist, death will probably always be inevitable no matter what we genetically alter in our DNA.

I have found that most people fall within these four examples of an individual’s life purpose.  If yours does not exactly fall into one of these four then I’m sure a combo of them will help match with your life goal. (Or maybe a fifth purpose such as mindfulness)

My life goal is the sum of all these types of people.  I find in many ways we are more alike than we are different.  In some situations we are the immortals that long for life to never end, and at other times we are the survivalists that put our heads down and get the job done.  We also care about the people we love and long to know about the things we care about. I think all of our life goals should be to make a future where humanity works together rather than against itself.  An economy that does not pin us against one another to survive. A lifestyle that does not limit us to thinking a job is our only purpose. An emotional state that does not let individuals get addicted to objects rather than people.  We, together, should strive to create a world that everyone works with one another. Once we are working together time will be spent achieving, rather than existing.  

We would sympathize with our neighbors and not let them struggle.  Once they are no longer struggling and are out of the survivalist mode then they can help others.  The more people that are physically and emotionally stable means the more people we have thinking together on how to grow humanity’s knowledge.  More brains being put together in trying to understand what this universe is really about. Simply because we see life to its core being meaningless now does not mean it has to be.  Life does not have to end with death if we discover there is another option. There are an infinite number of things we can discover because we do not know if they exist until we find that they exist, it is that simple.  And the best way to find them is to have the most minds working together.

This life goal has steps.  Improve the lives of individuals so that they do not have to be in the survivalist mode and can instead contribute to humanity’s knowledge, which could possibly lead to unimaginable discoveries…. much more than just being immortal.  Optimize the quality of life, end survivalist mindset, add to humanity’s collective pool of knowledge, and achieve unimaginable things. These are the steps that I believe would lead humanity in the right direction. A direction with purposeful lives and happy people.  This is my life goal, what’s yours?

 

Work Cited

Kapıcıoğlu, B. (2018, January 10). Multiple Intelligence Theory and Types of Intelligence. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from https://www.mentalup.co/blog/multiple-intelligence-theory-and-types-of-intelligence

What is Depression?


We live in a world where we don’t know our future, yet we hope it will be a good one. Isn’t that nice? We have hope for better days and this hope maintains our way of life. If I knew I was bound to be homeless by the age of forty, would I bother to continue my academic advancement? If I knew I would end up marrying someone I didn’t love, would I bother to continue pursuing a romantic partner? And if I knew my child would die before their eighth birthday, would I bother to have them in the first place? I don’t believe I would. 

The nice part is that I don’t know how things will end up for me. Because of this, I do plan on graduating college, I do plan on marrying someone I love, and I do plan on having children (well… I might). Hope is the motivation to push through the rough times so that you can once again reach the great times. It is the feeling that allows us to be optimistic about the future, which gives us the courage to try to find and maintain happiness. I feel that this hope is what pushes me, and everyone, every day to feel we can succeed and have a great life.

Yet, some people do not have hope. Some people cannot feel hope like the rest of the world does. They feel trapped when they are outside. They feel alone in a crowd of people. They feel empty when they do the things that make them happiest. These people are in danger every day yet look safe as can be. 

Many of these individuals have depression. Depression is not just sadness like many people think. It is a deep-rooted feeling of emptiness that consumes all other emotions and replaces them with a feeling of death. 

Most of the time when people are sad they know that they are sad and hate how they feel. And a lot of the time they just want it to end so they can move on. This is not how depression typically works. 

Depression is a feeling that appears to never end. It creates the illusion that this deep-rooted sadness one feels will never stop because they believe it is who they are rather than what it is happening to them. Their life becomes sadness, rather than the sadness infecting their life. True darkness is not when a room is without light, but instead when that room has no light ever coming back. When the Sun will never rise. When the light switch will never be flipped. When one’s eyes will never open again. 

Depression is a disease that kills. It kills how the person thinks, feels, acts, and whatever else that lets them feel human. Eventually, the idea of doing anything seems too painful, too time-consuming. Going to work, showering, eating, and simply getting out of bed seems like too much work in such a dark world. In a world without hope what is there to push us, to better ourselves? What is there to make us be how every human should be? There isn’t, there wouldn’t. Society would not function because nobody would function.

Depression is a very real and dangerous disease. It is one that should not be taken lightly, and it is one that should be understood. We should try to understand what our neighbors, our co-workers, and maybe even our loved ones go through every day. I am not saying they all have depression, but the stigma for this disease is enough for millions to go untreated every year. Millions of people suffer through this darkness alone every year, and they will continue to if we don’t talk about it. So please do. Please show these unlucky individuals how to have hope once again. Show them the light that they could not find. Open the blinds, flip the light switch, and let them open their eyes to the beautiful world around them.

What Are Facts?

Image Credit: https://diamondbooks.org.uk/

What is a fact?  According to Google, “A thing that is indisputably the case”.  Yeah… I don’t know about that. Personally, I find a huge problem with this definition.  I feel that facts are not nearly as concrete as people believe they are. That they are instead forever changing as people and society grow over time.

Some may say, “a fact is a fact” or, “a fact is true and there is no changing it.”  The thing is, that’s not always the case. Facts are always changing and will continue to change as people’s opinions do.  It used to be a “fact” that the world was flat. It also used to be a “fact” that atoms were the smallest form of matter. For god sake, it used to be a “fact” that people of color were of a lesser, subhuman species.  All these “facts” were indisputably the case, yet as we all know these examples are no longer even considered.  

Facts change, which proves it is no more than an opinion.  Facts like two plus two equal four is an example of a universally agreed-upon opinion.  One where everyone’s opinion agrees, so it appears undeniably true. We consider facts as such when everyone’s opinion is the same on a given topic, which leaves no argument and the disillusion of total truth.  

The only reason that two plus two does not equal five is because of the mathematical rules we have implemented into a human-made system.  If we were instead taught that two plus two equals five and then rearranged the systems, logic, and axioms so that this opinion stayed true, it would be no different than the answer being four.  This way of thinking stays true for anything we consider to be absolute and unchanging. Therefore, if everyone were to suddenly start calling cats dogs and dogs cats would that make everyone wrong or would a new reality emerge?Some people may say how those people were just wrong when they thought the world was flat, that they instead believed in a false fact.  Yet that statement makes no sense. The people of that time did not believe their facts were false. It was not until the day they were told otherwise that they even begin to question this once invincible truth.  

Plus, and this is the hardest part to accept, who is to say that the very facts we believe today will be the facts we believe in a year, in a month or even tomorrow.  The opinions we have today, that we consider facts, will stay that way until different opinions are agreed upon. Thus, replacing the old with the new.  

So in summary, a fact is when everyone’s opinion is the same which makes it appear indisputable. I’m not saying there are no facts, I’m simply redefining the word. So who cares.  Google’s definition, my definition, does it matter?  I believe so, simply because of the effect it has on people.  I believe it leads to a huge change in the mindset of the public.  Facts are agreed upon opinions. This means that literally anything, any idea, any belief, any thought, can be debated and disputed.  Meaning there is no guarantee that anything is certain and will always be certain.  

By understanding that we cannot know for sure that anything will always be true, means that people can talk openly about anything.  Anything and everything is up for debate and debate we should. We should want to know the absolute truth, and we should do everything we can to find it.  

The irony of this is that we will never know if we have stumbled upon the absolute truth.  Assuming there even is one, we would never know if we came across it. This can be a little sad, but I will encourage you to look at the issue from a different light.  By never knowing if we have crossed the finish line, we will never stop racing. We would never stop modernizing, growing, and learning together. This is why I instead see this ironic twist as a blessing.  Together we should strive to debate and discuss this infinitely confusing world. If we can do that together, then let the opinions come, I want to consider them all.

How Vulnerability can lead to Invincibility

Vulnerability is the state of being exposed to possible harm or attacks, either through physical or emotional means. Almost nobody wants to feel this, yet arguably everyone needs to. 

With few exceptions, people are born with the need to emotionally connect. This commonality largely leads to our desire for comfort and well-being. In short, we want to be happy. It’s that simple. A way to ensure such happiness is to minimize emotions that go against it. To do this, many of us attempt to minimize our vulnerability, our state when discomfort can affect our well-being. Our intentions are clear cut, but the consequences of these actions are damaging.

To reiterate, vulnerability is defined as a state of possibly being attacked emotionally and physically. Both mental and physical components of our well-being are affected by our vulnerability to certain situations. Yet there is a reason why we, the public conscious, mostly associate vulnerability with mental attacks. 

Humanity has created a society that allows physical safety for us. Yet this is a fairly recent achievement. Of humanity’s two-hundred thousand years of existence, only five percent of that has been spent building civilizations. Before that we spent our days running around, looking for our next meal. In those years of do or die, we learned many skills and ways to think, one of which was to contain our vulnerability from the outside world.

Nowadays, the typical person is much safer physically than his or her ancestors. Because of this, our physical defenses have gone down over the centuries and been replaced by mental ones. The shift in how we defend ourselves has allowed people the ability to close themselves off from others. The issue with this is that people cannot suppress one emotion and leave the rest untouched. In my personal experience and research, attempting to suppress one emotion will result in all of them being suppressed.

The worst part is that our technological innovations have made this work easier. How many times have you looked down at your phone rather than exchanging a slightly awkward ‘hello’ with someone? At that moment we feel insecure because we don’t know our relationship with that person. Instead of addressing it, many of us take the easy way out and ‘happen’ to be looking the other way. We still walk past that person, but it feels a whole lot easier because mentally we are miles away. 

This phenomenon is also partly why I believe people get mentally addicted to objects and activities.  Whether that be a phone, drug, alcohol, food, or sex, we begin to rely on these things because they make us feel less vulnerable. When under the influence, people enter a different headspace that distracts them from their psychological pain (not to mention most drugs flood the brain with dopamine, a chemical that causes happiness). Addicts need an emotion, or lack of one, and find that relief in something external to them, no matter the consequences. 

I think we can all agree that we would rather feel happy than sad. The harder question is how do we achieve this? How do we, ourselves, minimize sadness, rather than having something suppress it? I think the answer to this question is by allowing our vulnerability to coexist with us, by accepting that it is an emotion that is as valid as any other. Our emotions make us who we are, and we should be proud of them, all of them.

Not just the part you want to see, but the whole thing.  Yes, the glorified Instagram image of you is great, but the picture of you before you understood that hardly anything matches with orange is just as important.  The A you got in mathematics should make you proud, but so should the C you got in Spanish. We should strive to see ourselves for who we are and smile anyways.

Not just that but we also need to take risks.  To not hide in our phones when we are unsure whether to wave at the person walking past us.  We should instead look them in the eyes and say hello. Sure, they may not say it back, and you may feel embarrassed, but who cares.  At least you tried, and maybe next time that person will say hi to you after he or she reconsiders their action. This fear of being vulnerable and looking weak needs to end.  We are all weak in some ways, and we are all strong in other ways. Let’s embrace that and be proud of who we are, who we truly are.

Who is Biased?

Image credit: nst.com.my

I, like half of the United States, have divorced parents. Seeing both sides on a regular basis, I was lucky enough to be met with love no matter the roof I was sleeping under. So in that regard, I could never ask for more. I have loving parents and I am forever grateful for that. Yet, through this love came a war. A war on who my parents wanted me to be, and let me start by saying, they wanted very different things.

My mom wanted me to know how to survive. She wanted me to be tough, strong, and the type of person who would never be pushed around. Alternatively, my dad wanted me to know how to live. He wanted me to be caring, safe, and the person someone goes to when they need to talk about their feelings.

Both parents loved me, I’m grateful for that, but with these different parenting goals came different rules. Their differences would seem to show in everything I did or did not do. From one saying to fight the bully and the other saying to tell a teacher. One believing in having closer friends, and the other in a closer family. One taught me to get dirty and play rough, while the other taught me to stay inside and keep warm.

As a child, all I wanted to do was make my loving parents proud. Yet this seemed impossible. No matter what I did I seemed to always be displeasing one or the other.

In response to this impossible task I started living two lives. I became two people. I would play differently, talk to different people, and react to things differently, all depending on the house I was living in for that moment. This was my life for quite some time, more than I would like to admit. Yet eventually it came to an end and the two conflicting worlds finally merged.

I still do not totally know what it was, but one day I simply started seeing what I was doing to myself. I realized the duality of my own personality. And I didn’t like it.

Eventually I collected myself and developed a singular Jake West. Through this process an amazing trait formed. I learned to keep an open mind. From years of seeing such different views it became clear that neither side was entirely correct. I learned there is no right or wrong in almost all debates and decisions, there are simply opinions. These opinions form from biased backgrounds and differing childhoods. They form from the limited knowledge we are taught and the limited information we learn. Depending on where we live and who we are raised by, this limited knowledge differs from person to person.

What I write for you right now is not a fact, but merely a biased opinion. A biased opinion that I hope to be as unbiased and as factual as possible, but an opinion nonetheless. What I have found in society is that we treat these opinions as if they are facts and then refuse to allow anyone to change or sway our unarguable facts.

I believe this is, without a doubt, one of the greatest mistakes our species is currently making in modern times. We are treating our opinions as facts and acting on them in certainty. We are discrediting people who have put just as much time and effort into their biased view as the person trying to discredit them. And all of this is limiting our ability to share knowledge and understand one another.

So, I have one request from this post: listen. Listen to your friends and listen to your enemies. Listen to your superiors and listen to your inferiors. Especially listen to your children and listen to your guardians. We must listen to one another because what everyone has to say is important. Everyone. There will always be something to take away from a conversation and there is always someone who can teach you a new bit of information.

We must understand that our views, our opinions and our thoughts are biased. We are all biased and we are all not completely correct on our view on the world. If we can learn this, then we can learn to truly listen. Once we begin listening we will be that much closer to seeing the ultimate truth and that much closer to seeing humanity come together. My childhood taught me this, and I hope one day your experiences will teach you this as well.