Social Theory is a category designed to open the floor for debate on many social situations and individual ways of thinking. Not necessarily going against conventional wisdom, but more like adding a view on an already controversial way of thinking. We simply look to add to the discussion, rather than end it.
Why are we so focused on winning? It seems like everything that society holds dear has either a number and/or a rank that allows us to see who is on top, and who is on the bottom. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s start with sports.
In 2016, the average number of NFL games watched every week was 264 million. And being just one of the many sport leagues that are commonly viewed in the United States, it is without question that these games have a huge impact on what we are interested in, spend our time doing, and learning about.
And with that being said, I also can’t think of anything with more measurements on determining winners and losers than sports. We have data to compare the number of touchdowns, yards rushed, yards passed, points per game, points allowed per game, interceptions, fumbles, completion percentage, trips to SuperBowl, farthest field goal, farthest field goal attempt, their’s even an aggressiveness percentage, and of course, wins and loses. All these statistics are ways to see who is on top and who is on the bottom. Sometimes in the big ways, and then occasionally in the smallest of ways.
But there is much more “winning” going on than just sports. We treat our education system similarly. Whether it be from class rank or our obsessive focus on test grades, or the hierarchy of forms of knowledge, students always seem to have a number that they are equated to.
Now, a possible argument I hear ringing in my ears is that education needs to be this way. How else would we know the performance and knowledge of students? Well before I answer that question, I would first like to point out how inefficient the US system is now. When scored against other OECD counties, the US ranked 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th in science. Weighting these subjects of knowledge all equally, the US overall educational ranking is about 19th in the world. And can you guess the country that was ranked number one overall? Finland… the same country that’s only form of measurement in classes is pass or fail.
So is it possible to have a system that doesn’t focus on grades in school? Well, it certainly is in Finland. And may I add that it is not only possible, but rather ideal. Of course, there is an endless list of how the United States is different from Finland, but that should not deter someone from considering the flourishing possibility of school without grades.
Therefore, if it is not required, and at the very least we could play around with the idea of education without grades, then why do we ruthlessly stick to this idea of needing a winner? Why must we find a million measurements in our sports teams to see just how exactly they win and lose? And unfortunately, I believe this obsession can even cloud our own reality.
Going smaller with this thought experiment, I wonder how this need to win effects our day to day lives. When we listen to a presidential debate do we listen closely to the facts and policies of our candidates, or do we just get a feel for which one is quicker to respond, seems more confident, and just acts in control the whole time (not pointing fingers… but, you know). In that case, I feel that we are more focused on the “winner” rather than the one that is most correct. And this hurts us because it can drive us into choosing the wrong people for the most important jobs (… still not pointing any fingers. Nope, none at all).
Now getting a bit more abstract, how about when we debate? Do we stay logical throughout the experience and focus on both listening, while presenting our own data? Or do we get emotional as our grip on the conversation is lost as we begin to “lose”? In these cases, we focus on our pride and ego, rather than the truth. Many of us seem to choose “winning” over learning, and that alone hinders our ability to see and understand the many perspectives and people that we live among.
I believe this need to win is destructive. It can be constructive, don’t get me wrong. At times it can lead to motivation and purpose, but at this point, I find it extremely toxic. Eating away at what we determine as value, I feel that our need to win is holding us back from the many possibilities that we either never see, or allow conventional wisdom to choose for us.
Blowing my whistle as loud as I could, I stood up from the lifeguard stand and pointed my finger at the disobedient swimmer who was testing me all day.
“You have jumped into the pool three times now and every single time I have told you to stop or else I will kick you out! Is that correct?”
Taken off guard, the swimmer shook his head out of fear.
“Exactly! So, grab your things and do not come back to this pool for the rest of the day!”
Leaving his group of friends, the swimmer got out of the pool, grabbed his belongings and left the swim area. Sitting back down into my seat, I continued my work as a lifeguard and watched over the other swimmers.
This experience, although common among lifeguards, confused me. Why did I do that? Or I guess the better question is how did I do that? I asked myself these questions because yelling at disobedient kids was one of the last things I thought I would find myself doing.
I, like many people, am filled with insecurities. These insecurities are affiliated with what others think of me, how I present myself and who I am as a person. And typically, these insecurities would stop me from ever making a scene even close to as dramatic as the one I just made. In different circumstances, like giving a presentation, I would normally be scared shitless of even speaking, let alone yelling.
Also, even if I wasn’t normally insecure in that type of situation I usually would still refrain from saying anything. These kids, although annoying as hell sometimes, are for most past amazing little humans. They can be loud and rebellious, but that is part of growing up and I believe it is a crucial part of human development.
Yet there I was, standing, pointing, and yelling my demands. How I was at that moment was not how I define myself. I do not see myself as a confident, rule-abiding person. So, I asked myself again, why did I do that?
I believe the answer to this question expands far greater than my personal experience. I feel that this same mindset goes into anyone filling a role of authority and/or power. And more accurately, rather than filling the role of power, we are instead filled by the role of power.
As a lifeguard I have the duty to watch over and make sure all swimmers are safe and secure throughout their day of fun. I have this responsibility and therefore must think within this mindset. And as someone with so much responsibility, also comes a significant amount of power. I have the authority to kick anyone out of the swim area as long as I feel it will contribute to the overall safety of the swim zone. Therefore, with this mix of abnormal responsibility and increased authority over others, a new version of myself emerges.
I believe this phenomenon occurs in all positions of power. A similar idea was quoted by Adam Smith as he described the transformation of the original capitalists: “Pleasant or unpleasant, their characteristics faded beside the overriding quality: they were interested in expansion in growth and investment”. This quote is essentially saying that no matter who these first capitalists were, they all eventually dropped their reasons and goals for starting their business and replaced it with the sole goal of gaining profits.
I feel that these positions of power change who we are. If not in the long run, then at least when we are in the position of authority. With this philosophy, I wonder how this affects our society? I wonder if real change can happen when people are molded into their position? And whether change is more possible with new representatives or if it can only be done with new positions for people to gain authority and power from?
I do not have an answer to these questions, but I encourage you to try to find your own. Only through your own thoughts and wisdom can one really believe something. Therefore, I hope you find the time to formulate your own opinion on the matter and then comment below so that we can have a healthy, constructive debate on the topic. I believe authority can change how we act and define ourselves, but what I wonder is how that affects each and every one of us.
No different than abnormally constant sadness, our bodies are not designed for eternal happiness. Our emotions, like sadness and happiness, are made to put us in a constant up and down as we experience life. With every emotion having its purpose, they were all constructed through years of evolution and natural selection. These emotions allow our biological needs to appear as desires and our biological burdens to be seen as disasters. Therefore, endless happiness would be as unnatural and possibly as detrimental as never-ending sadness.
It is this understanding of mine that has led to my desire to not find everlasting happiness, but instead an everlasting purpose. Because if there is one thing I learned from my mental health advocacy class it is that purpose is the biggest driver to helping people. Whether we discussed chronic anxiety, chronic depression, or suicidal behavior, it was all the same, the number one thing that helped these people heal and live their lives again was finding purpose.
Purpose allows one to feel content no matter their current emotion. And it is this content feeling that can last throughout your whole life. Having a purpose, and being content with one’s life, can last through any emotion and make the bad barrable and the good better.
So, do we live in Heaven… maybe. I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of possible purpose in this world. Whether you look at the dozen different ways the world will end in twenty years, the family you start building whenever you desire, or the possibility of becoming a millionaire, it seems everywhere has a purpose. Some having the ability to choose from more or less options of life, but it would appear no matter who you are, you can find a purpose to your life and spend the whole time filling it.
Although not enteral happiness, since there is a ton of pain and misery in this world, we do have the opportunity of a never-ending feeling of content with one’s life. Therefore, possibly being the best that the human brain can ask for, we very well may be living in some form of Heaven and not even know it.
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Or is this Hell?
We will live in a dangerous, depressing world. Housing twenty-seven million contemporary slaves, over eight hundred million people starving, and a line of production which can only last so much longer, it would appear this Earth we live on is a crumbling Hell.
And this Hell always gets worse. With a never-ending cycle of the few conquering the many, we have dozens of systems in place throughout the world which keep real change from ever happening. Whether it be racism, our hierarchy within education, incarceration, lack of social mobility, economic inequality, it would seem no matter what you set out your life to do, things only change, not get better.
The worst part of it all is that even if you dig for the deeper meaning of life, you will come up short. How do I know? Well, I don’t. There totally could be some deeper meaning that someone has discovered which I am just not enlightened enough to know about yet. But until told otherwise I will stick to the cold hard facts: nothing is natural, and everything will end eventually.
The end will eventually come, and not just for yourself, but for everyone else as well. Therefore, whether you’re George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., or Albert Einstein, it’s all the same, eventually, everything will be forgotten and lost forever. There is simply no way for you, or me or anyone else to do enough to where they will last any more than a few thousand years.
So, if you want to find your purpose, go ahead, but the odds of it actually amounting to anything is zero… so then is it Hell?
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There is a third option. One that is a bit unconventional. One that some may say is illogical. And one that you may not believe is possible. It’s okay, I didn’t believe it at first either.
The third option is that everything is perfect. And I quite literally mean everything. Just take a second to recognize what you are looking at right now. Get out of your mind and see. See the words on the screen not as a sentence but instead black lines that bend and swirl in order to convey a message. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
Look up from that screen. Look at the area, the space, that surrounds you. Notice its colors, its shapes, and labels. Yes, the labels are an interesting one. It’s hard to see past the “objects” you label as everything. It’s hard to see it for what it is, not what you expect it to be.
But that thing, the real thing, that is the perfectness. Because once you see everything for what it is, you will realize it is all the same. It is all one. And simultaneously as you see this everything as one, you will see that it is all equally connected. All equally working to make the same thing that it all is.
And here’s the most fun part. Looking at this one reality, you will eventually notice that you are not exempt. You are a part of the one as anything else you as the creator has created. Did you know you birthed yourself? It’s odd to think about.
You will notice that you are all one. And just as the “objects” changed to one, so will you. You shall vanish. In your place will sit a point. A point of consciousness creating all that is. That is when you will see for the first time. See the beauty of your invention. See the truth behind the cloak that the ego created by the demand for survival priority.
So what is this third option? This option is to recognize that Heaven and Hell are all your own invention. That they are a part of reality as much as anything else. Nothing less, and nothing more. This third option recognizes that everything that will ever be is right in front of you right now. And now, and now, and now. Independently structured to let you write your story and share it with all who care to here.
This third option is freedom. This third option is peace. This third option is perfectness. Because there is nothing to compare. There is nothing to fear. And there is nothing ever wrong. It is all you, making more of you. And that my friend is a Heaven no biblical story can replicate. That, this, is a nirvana you can last infinitely within if you just notice it.
Image Credit: https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com
Being one of the trickier ideas I have attempted to tackle, it took me weeks of deliberate thought to come to a conclusion on the subjective understanding of identity. Attempting to write multiple blog posts on the subject, it seemed impossible for me to understand the idea of what we identify as. Knowing that the I that I identify with was merely a construct, I questioned how identity worked since there was nothing absolute about it. To better understand this idea, I investigated my own past and found personal proof of this subjective identity. An example of such is that at a young age, sometime in middle school, I began to dress a bit more casually. And by casually, I mean that I began to resort to the cheapest, comfiest clothing I could find. Going from jeans to sweatpants and button-downs to t-shirts, I began to downgrade the quality of my outfits. It was only later in my life that I began to question why I would do such a thing. At the time I gave people the usual answer of, “It is more conformable”. And that was true, I really enjoyed comfortable clothing at the time. The soft material of sweatpants was far easier to sit in compared to the tight, rough cotton jeans I moved away from. Therefore, I was not lying, yet I always knew I was holding back the whole story. There was more to it than just physical comfort; I realized in later years that my transition was also for mental comfort.
I was, and still am, an extremely emotional person. Growing up with this characteristic made certain parts of my life difficult. Accompanied by my social awkwardness and slight Asperger’s, I was an easy target in middle school. Not in a way that I was bullied, but I simply couldn’t win any fight I was thrown in. Verbally, I was a lost cause for most of my childhood. I seemed to always fall short on comebacks/what to say to the other middle schoolers who were desperately attempting to release their raising testosterone levels.
Therefore, I adapted. If I couldn’t win the verbal fights/stop them from happening, then I found the best course of action was for it to not both me. I figured that if what they said couldn’t hurt me, then I would be fine no matter how many arguments and smack talkings I lost. Not being a conscious thought at the time, I slowly started drifting into that persona. I wore clothes that showed that I didn’t care about what they thought. I brushed off any insults and made myself seem impervious to them. I came off as someone who couldn’t be hurt, which led people to question why they would even bother.
I share this experience with you because it truly confused me when trying to understand identity. It confused me because that persona, that identity, was constructed. I made that person up, and then made myself as close as I could to that person. I can very objectively reflect on the situation and see that now. Yet here I am, twenty years old, and now I can say that I continue to wear sweatpants and ragged clothing because I truly do not care. Unless I am going to an event with required formality, I typically wear the cheapest clothing I can find. A running joke with my friends is that every day I have at least one piece of clothing with at least one unintended hole in it. These days, I believe that I truly wear these clothes because it is cheap and that I would prefer to spend my money elsewhere.
Now what confused me for so long is how this could be. How could something that was once a construct feel so true and absolute about who I am as a person today? How did I go from forcing myself to wear cheap clothing to believing I enjoy cheap clothing because the idea of consuming high-end clothes disgusts me? This question is what left me clueless about identity until I literally and figuratively saw the answer I was looking for.
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Walking back from class, I was listening to Caamp with my headphones on. Feeling great as his beautifully raspy voice filled my mind, a visual experience began. Much like a daydream that I didn’t really expect/control, I began to picture one of my friends and I were facing each other. With defeat in her eyes, I imagined her looking down to the ground, ignoring my attempts to cheer her up. Eventually, the version of myself in this hallucination pulls from behind his back a glowing orb with a mix of yellow and white colors swishing around on the inside. Smiling, I show the orb to my friend. This orb symbolized hope and happiness, and most of all, love. Shaking her head, my friend reaches from behind her back and pulls out her orb. Unlike mine, hers is the same size, but entirely black. Her orb symbolizes worthlessness, hopelessness, and death. Showing me her orb, through no words at all, she explains that it is just different for her. She explains that she is just not like me in that way and that we pull our energy and ourselves from different sources.
The vision of myself is not convinced. Continuing to smile, he reaches from behind his back again and pulls the same orb that she has. It is all black, and just like hers, it symbolized death. Holding one in each hand, my friend looks confused. She questions how that is possible, how I can have both death and life coincide. Then again, without any words, it is understood that this is possible because I made them both. Neither are final, and neither are absolute. I explain to her that I began with the black orb, but as time went on, I didn’t want that anymore. Artificially, I created the bright yellow and white orb. And do not be mistaken, just because I constructed it does not mean it is not real. In their own ways, each orb is as real and powerful as the other. With this understood, my friend put her orb down on the ground. Using her pointer finger, she slowly poked the black orb and just as her finger made contact with the orb, a circle of bright yellow and white splashed around her finger.
The visual then ended with me almost getting hit by a car in the physical world… I was a bit preoccupied and did not think to check before crossing. That visual thought let me finally understand identity. Rushing to the nearest empty workspace, I quickly wrote the segment below in fear of forgetting:
There is no true identity, but that’s okay. It is instead forever changing between everything you encounter and experience. The things you encounter, which is derived from nature and nurture, determine who you are and who you want to be. You are no more the person you want to be than the person you are. The person you want to be is what motivates you to be who you are now. The person you are now shows you what you wish you were more like. It’s the yin and yang of your identity. The way to find true happiness in relation to identity is by being happy for who you are now, yet also striving to be a healthier person. To have a goal of how you want to become, but not need to become it. Neither identity is more real, which is odd at first. At first, we feel that who we are now is the true identity, but that would be the same as saying the future does not matter because it is not the present yet. Who you want to be is just as important for who you are because you once wanted to be who you are now. It’s a constant perfection of who you are. And it is this perfection that is relative to what you feel is perfect. Which to reiterate, your definition of perfection is contingent on the internal and external interactions you have had throughout your life. The yin and yang of identity is a constant one because there is no absolute person you are and there is no absolute person you want to be.
I have found identity to be a rather complex balance between who we want to be and who we are. Always subject to change as time and experiences present themselves to us, I find nothing absolute or restricting about identity. I instead find it to be something that fluidly moves as we learn to care or not care about things within and around us.
If you would like to share your own views or confusion on the topic, please comment below to allow a productive/healthy conversation that we can ideally both learn from.
I for one have heard dozens of people say, usually in frustration, that nothing is real. They exclaim that nothing matters and that everything is bullshit and fake. With my post today, I hope to explain this idea and show how fake or not, everything may matter after all.
After careful reverse engineering, I believe the statement, “nothing is real”, is better said as “nothing is natural”. I feel obligated to fix the statement because obviously… something must be “real”. We could go the skeptic route and question our very existence and senses, but without going too deep we can safely assume that we exist somewhere at some time in someplace. So, it is not that we are not real, but instead that everything is artificial.
An example of how everything is artificial is to point out that the only reason we find life worth living is because we have evolved to think in that way. Our brains, through years of natural selection and survival, learned that when we value life at a high standard we typically extend it. Alternatively, the brains of our species that did not value life so highly died off. Not suddenly, but instead very gradually. The people with ideas that life was nothing too valuable did not fear death as much, which led to shorter lives. With this shortened lifespan, came less time to reproduce and influence others with their views.
** That’s assuming that this was even something learned through nurture. I would make the gamble that life is just inherently brought about with the built neuro-networking that values life. I mean, it’s not like people just popped out of nowhere, they evolved from something else, and I’m sure that something else had learned to value life long before. **
The primal instinct within us to survive is within us all. But to show my point, just because something is within us now, doesn’t mean it has any more right as an alternative mindset. If we had evolved and developed differently than what we value as good and bad may very well be flipped. Yet regardless, even if they flipped we would feel just as emotionally attached to them.
To make this idea more concrete, I will create a hypothetical. Imagine a society like ours, that found suffering to be good (I personally define suffering as pain, mental or physical, that has no purpose or meaning behind it). As these members of society were brutally tortured on their days off from work, much like a spa day for us, their dopamine levels would skyrocket. As their nails were peeled from their fingertips, and their limbs were slowly pulled apart, these people would laugh or just feel relaxed.
This hypothetical seems a bit unrealistic, for we are a bit biased, but if we begin to see past our assumptions it may not seem so far-fetched. Referring to my hypothetical, what if that society felt joy from suffering because their atmosphere dissolves human tissue that isn’t actively working to repair a broken body part. As this society developed, it learned what it had to do in order to survive very quickly. Therefore, the people who discovered the way to live did what they had to do, and the ones who did not, died. As this process of natural selection continued, eventually the society was just left with people who felt safe and secure when their bodies were suffering.
Now earlier I defined suffering as pain with no greater purpose. Survival is in many ways a greater purpose, so let me finish my hypothetical. After twenty thousand years of this poisonous atmosphere, it eventually stabilizes, and people are no longer required to endure pain to survive. Yet, even with this shift, they continued to suffer optionally. Not because they must, but because they want to. They do this because that is what they have defined as good and happiness. This society would label an act that we call bad as good, and neither of which are any more true than the other.
A question you may be asking is how I can be so sure that this society would continue to suffer. How can I be certain that this society would choose to endure pain when they did not have to? My reasoning is because you can see a similar process going on in our society today.
Human beings enjoy sugar, not because it is just good, but instead because our bodies have learned that it is a high source of calories. And when we were scrapping for anything we could get our hands on; high-calorie meals were just about the only thing humanity needed. It was not until very recently that we developed the reverse issue of overeating in certain parts of the world. Hence why we see such high rates of obesity throughout the United States. We crave these foods even though we do not need them, and many people are unable to resist the temptation.
In numerous parts of our lives, we can point at the things we think and realize that they are completely constructed. Have you ever noticed that even before the “scary” music (what really makes music scary?) starts playing in a superhero movie you already know who the villain is? With seemingly every super villain’s costume, it appears to be pointy with dark colors. Have you ever wondered why that is? There is nothing truly scary about these shapes and colors, yet we seem to fear them. It seems even as a twenty-year-old I walk a little faster after I turn the lights off in my basement.
These things are simply what we have learned to stay away from. Pointy things can typically break through our outer layer, which we call skin, and cause our blood to leave our body in a non-ideal way. The dark is something that our subconscious tries to avoid because when things are dark we have trouble seeing them, which allows us to be vulnerable to a possible threat.
Nothing is natural. Our very definition of what is right and wrong is simply an artificial construct that has developed through natural selection and evolution.
Now, this idea may sound sad at first. It may be a little disappointing to believe that nothing is absolute and pure. But there is a silver lining to this mindset, and it’s an important one. Whether we understand pain is simply neurons firing off signals to inform our brain to avoid continued damage to the body or not, we still feel it. No matter how conscious you are of our artificial world, we still feel and experience these things as if they are natural and absolute.
At the end of the day, I really don’t want to be punched in the face. I would also prefer to not have my fingernails forcefully removed, even if that is my personal bias talking. Everything is artificial, but that does not mean it is not real. What I feel is a very real part of me. Whether it is physical or emotion, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day my emotions are present, and I would prefer to please them. I want to please them because when they are happy, I feel happy.
I believe that we should attempt to understand our artificial world, but to also not feel bad because of it. By knowing that nothing is natural we can then begin to try to change the seemingly unavoidable issues in society. We can begin to look past our biological desires and attempt to find what those desires are truly looking for. And we can do all of this with our heads held high. Whether my happiness is a construct or not, I feel it. And to me, it feels very real. I believe that realness is worth fighting for.
Artificial intelligence has been a personal topic of interest for many years now. With arguments ranging from their level of consciousness, superior and inferior abilities, and what affects they will have on the economy, I have always found the subject to be interesting. And it is this last topic that I have prepared to share with you today. I hope to present the debate fairly, ending with my preferred solution to the growing phenomenon.
Artificial intelligence is commonly referred to as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence (Marr, 2018). No different than any other tool humanity has invented, A.I. is something we have created to modernize and make our lives easier. Its tasks range from recognizing one’s face to unlocking a smart phone’s home screen to helping conduct surgery. Therefore, this tool is helping all around us, even in places we don’t think to look.
The first position worth mentioning is to focus on funding, research, and the development of artificial intelligence. Because of artificial intelligence’s profound ability to perform tasks, policies like ITI Unveils First Industry-Wide Artificial Intelligence Policy have been sprouting up recently (ITI Unveils Policy, 2017). This policy simply advocates to encourage A.I. through funding and research. The policy sees the advantages of A.I. and therefore embraces it no matter the social consequences that may follow. It essentially assumes the benefits will greatly outweigh any problems A.I. may create.
A key point to this debate is noticing what makes A.I. unique. This tool’s uniqueness, and issue, is how efficient it is at its job. Matt Beane, Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, addresses this efficiency in one of his Ted Talks. He explains how surgeons, and residents, in particular, are struggling to gain the skills they need to efficiently perform their job. They are lacking the experience they need because A.I. is simply doing it for them. Being programmed to minimize their patient’s risk, these A.I. robots are not allowing the unsteady hand of a young resident anywhere near their operation table (Beane, 2018). This puts humanity in an awkward situation of picking between the inefficient human or the flawless tool. This dilemma of picking between efficiency and humanity leads to the rebuttal of this position.
Quoted from an online Ford article, “Statistics say that 47% of all employment opportunities will be occupied by machines within the next two decades. Statistics also say that about 80% of all Americans believe that they will be able to maintain their livelihood after the prophesized robotic boom” (Stark, 2017). In other words, within twenty years, starting two years ago, half of all the known jobs that exist today will be occupied by machines. Remarkably, Stark is not alone with this assumption. BBC News reported that eight-hundred million jobs will be displaced by 2030 due to robot automation (2017). Along with a recent poll conducted by The New York Times said that 37 percent of the reason people were unemployed from the age of 25 to 54 was due to technology (Miller, 2014). These extreme numbers are appearing because, as said earlier, A.I. is an efficient tool that can function, in select situations, better than humans. And as A.I. has been developed and improved, their predicted scope of being better than humans has risen accordingly.
Before going too far in this train of thought, one should not forget that this situation has come up before. The Industrial Revolution was a very similar time to this one. Many people feared that their jobs would be displaced, and sure enough, they were. Regardless of the Luddites’ fruitless attempts to smash and burn every machine in existence, the revolution did occur along with the displacement of thousands of jobs. But what many people did not see coming were the thousands of jobs that were created due to this job displacement. With the invention of the steam engine came the end of the horse cargo industry, but also the beginning of railroads. Yes, cargo builders eventually ran out of work, but simultaneously the demand for engineers grew significantly. Going off of basic laisse-fair principles, it would be counter-intuitive to stop the natural flow of the market. With competition among companies also comes competition among sectors, and as one grows in efficiency it should crush the others. The jobs of the old sector are destroyed, but by doing so, it opens a whole new sector of better, more efficient jobs.
We see this trend continuing with the emergence of artificial intelligence. Dozens of jobs have been created out of seemingly thin air. Titles like data detective, artificial intelligence business development manager and cyber city analyst have all been created because of A.I. (Stillman, 2017). Therefore, it would appear that much like the Industrial Revolution, job markets are forever changing and should be allowed to maintain a healthy economy.
Yet there remains an issue at hand. As compelling as this counter-statement may be, it neglects two crucial areas when debating the implantation of the A.I. One of which is referred to as the superiority myth by Daniel Susskind. This myth explains our irrational assumption that human beings will always be the dominant workforce (Susskind, 2017). This term essentially says, yes, the markets may change, and jobs may be replaced instead of destroyed. But the issue is that this is only beneficially when assuming that the new jobs are best performed by humans.
Within capitalism, a worker sells their labor. In the same way as a commodity, our workability is sold and bought depending on the supply and demand of that product.
Historically, human labor has always been a superior commodity. One with both a constant demand and supply. The issue with A.I. is that it may be the first commodity to replace human worker ability. No different than the transition from horse cargoes to the steam engine, we may see the same transition from human workability to A.I. This is an issue because without the demand of human workability comes a collapse in capitalism. If the consumers of an economy are not generating revenue to consume with, then no consumption would take place. Which would terminate the cycle of the economy.
The second crucial point to recognize in this debate is that even if jobs are successfully replaced with human beings, there is still a probable decrease in unit labor cost. Referring to the picture I took in my sociology economics class to the right, as technology has skyrocketed, so has productivity. Yet what has essentially stayed the same is worker hourly compensation. Therefore, even the workers that have successfully maintained their jobs, have found themselves grossly underpaid. This is not only morally incorrect, because with underpaid workers comes overpaid bosses, but also detrimental to the economy. With this being one of the major causes of income inequality, the economy is struggling to maintain consumption with such limited demand. If we see A.I. continue its trend of “efficiency”, then we may develop into a grossly unstable and unequal economic structure.
These concluding points have brought me to my preferred position on the matter. I find it naïve to assume that A.I. will only displace as many jobs as it creates. Yet I also find it counter-intuitive to become a Luddite and attempt to stop technological modernization. At the end of the day, it is a safer world when we have A.I. surgeons who never mess up, compared to human surgeons who sometimes mess up. Therefore, I find it ideal to allow the growth and modernization of A.I. if we also implement policies that will support and prepare humanity for economic and societal change.
Attempting to not stray too far from the main subject, it should also be noted that the predictions of job displacement and artificial intelligence’s ability to outperform human workability are only predictions. Quoted from Scientific America when referring to self-driving cars, “But to me, as a human factors researcher, that’s not enough information to properly evaluate whether automation may actually be better than humans at not crashing. Their respective crash rates can only be determined by also knowing how many non-collisions happen. For human drivers is it one collision per billion chances to crash or one in a trillion?” (Hancock, 2018). Hancock explains how it is very difficult to measure collision rate and therefore it is only through hopeful assumption that we expect autonomous cars to outperform human drivers. Being a historically accurate trend, human desires tend to cloud reality. It would be great if we could have self-driving cars that functioned a hundred times better than any human, but that very well may never be a reality. Sadly, we will not know if it is real until it happens, and only then will it be too late to take action without issues arising. Hence why policies like the A.I. in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able are critical to our future (Authority of the House of Lords, 2018). This policy looks at the possible issues that may arise with A.I. and raises awareness of them. Essentially preparing for the probable societal and economic issues ahead. It is not limiting A.I. development but instead, preparing for it.
A.I. is becoming increasingly important in today’s debates. Its significance is rising as it outperforms humans in more and more tasks. As of now, there is no clear distinction when this tool will plateau, therefore it would be wise to build awareness and preparation for the future. By doing so we will not be limiting the arguably inevitable but will instead plan for how to maximize our benefits associated with it.
Artificial intelligence may replace human workers ability altogether. It may also plateau and allow for a shift in the workforce rather than the destruction of it. Until that day all we can do is prepare for either option and hope whichever one occurs we will be well suited for.
Work Cited
Rise of Robot Work Force Stokes Human Fears (2014, December 15). Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/upshot/as-robots-grow-smarter-american-workers-struggle-to-keep-up.html
Miller The Build-up: Good and Ready: After Slow Beginnings, a Big Push in Robotics now seems Imminent. (2014, March 29).Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.economist.com/special-report/2014/03/29/good-and-ready
Marr The Key Definitions Of Artificial Intelligence (AI) That Explain Its Importance. (February 14, 2018) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/02/14/the-key-definitions-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-that-explain-its-importance/#5fe2e5594f5d
News Releases – ITI Unveils First Industry-Wide Artificial Intelligence Policy Principles. (October 24, 2017) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.itic.org/news-events/news-releases/iti-unveils-first-industry-wide-artificial-intelligence-policy-principles
Robot automation will ‘take 800 million jobs by 2030’ – report (November 29, 2017) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42170100
Stillman, Jessica 21 Future Jobs the Robots Are Actually Creating (December 6, 2017) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/21-future-jobs-robots-are-actually-creating.html
Hancock, Peter Are Autonomous Cars Really Safer Than Human Drivers? (February 3, 2018) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-autonomous-cars-really-safer-than-human-drivers/
Authority of the House of Lords AI in the UK: ready, willing and able? (April 16, 2018) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldai/100/100.pdf
Stark, Harold As Robots Rise, How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Jobs (April 29, 2017) Retrieved March 4, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/haroldstark/2017/04/28/as-robots-rise-how-artificial-intelligence-will-impact-jobs/#a10638f7687d
TED Matt Beane (2018, November). How do we learn to work with intelligent machines? Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_beane_how_do_we_learn_to_work_with_intelligent_machines?language=en#t-10332
TED Daniel Susskind (2017, December). 3 myths about the future of work (and why they’re not true) Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_susskind_3_myths_about_the_future_of_work_and_why_they_re_not_true?language=en#t-640007
How we say things is as important as what we are saying.
Conflict is something that I have always found terribly uncomfortable. I would argue that most of the conflicts that we have with one another are unnecessary. These conflicts simply exist because of poor communication. In this case I am defining a conflict as an argument or serious disagreement between two or more people, that may, or may not lead to physical violence. I believe that the majority of conflicts, major or minor, can be avoided by the use of patience and careful word choice.
A prime example of common conflicts are those amongst couples. Next time you hear a couple argue or bicker, listen in on what began it. So often I find that the fight isn’t over anything at all, it was just because of the way something was said. How we say things is as important as what we are saying. There are a thousand ways to express any sentiment. Naturally, some of these ways are going to be better than others.
Let’s think about two ways I could say “I love you” to someone. One way I could say it is, “If I had a list of all of the things I loved, you would always be in the number one spot.” Another way of saying the same thing is, “I love you even more than hamburgers, and those are my second favorite thing!” both sentiments describe a list of things I love, both say the one I love is number one, however one sentiment is clearly more romantic than the other.
So going back to conflict, it seems that so many people present their statements to others from a place of anger. Anger warps what we mean to say a lot of the time, it then only serves to make the other person angry. I believe that it is best to present statements from a place of patience and understanding, that way they can be met with the same in return.
I know that this is much easier said than done. After all it can be a real challenge to stay calm and collected all of the time. That is why the process to become a better communicator is challenging and always ongoing. It is so important to however, that I think it is worth the effort that it takes to learn. There are two basic steps to working towards becoming a better communicator, listening, and then responding in a way you believe your audience will understand the most.
Listening is so essential when it comes to defusing conflict. After all if you don’t listen you probably won’t be able to come up with an appropriate response in the first place. To practice this I would suggest to give yourself little reminders during conversation, ask yourself “am I listening to what they are saying?” It seems like a small thing but can really make a big difference, especially when well practiced.
Responding in a way that your audience will understand most is also a powerful tool to defuse conflict. Imagine a child has taken something from you and is upset that they had to give it back. One could explain to the child that stealing is wrong through abstract concepts and talk of the nature of morality, however I think this would be ineffective. A better way would be to appeal to the emotional side of the child, possibly relate to a time something was taken from them. Every person is different in their own way, so it is important we keep that in mind and know that a way we respond to one person during a time of conflict is not the same way we respond to another.
I hope that as we become more advanced we see less conflict in the world. More importantly than avoiding conflict, is the way that we respond to one another. If we listen more to one another, and tailor our words to who we are speaking with then we will be well on our way to a more peaceful world. Not to mention, a world full of more thoughtful and productive conversation.
Modern life is a fascinating blend of culture, technology, and evolution. What I find most interesting of all is how our evolved traits fluidly mix with other aspects of life. After all we are animals, we followed the same process to get to this point as any other animal did to get where they were. The kicker of all of this is that many people consider themselves different from animals, and therefore would not like to think of themselves as such. My favorite example of this is with sex.
There are two aspects of sex, the act itself and the courtship ritual leading up to it. Our courtship rituals are strange, very strange. We go on dates (usually multiple) before deciding if someone is a suitable mate, we use modern technology like phones to find suitable mates, and we follow societal rules in order to determine the best move to ensure intercourse. Evolutionarily, we like sex, quite a bit in fact. So like any other animal we strive to look for mates, but it is things like phones and rules and dates that modify the natural equation. The blend of natural and “unnatural” here is so fluid it is difficult to see that it is even animalistic at all.
I am reluctant to use the word “unnatural” in regards to human behavior because again I think this language is used to undermine the fact of what we are. Whatever humans do is natural, because by definition we are part of nature. To showcase this try using more biological terms when speaking about aspects of daily life. When we use words like “mating” for sex and “feeding” for eating the facade of our disconnection is apparent.
Many industries acknowledge this fact and use it to their advantage. There are colors humans are naturally drawn to, designs that we love seeing, and tastes that we crave. By using this knowledge they can create the products that can reach the most people, because almost all people will share these genetic similarities. This is the reason everyone likes the taste of sweetness, why art is so universal, and why sex is so widely participated in.
These thoughts can be daunting, if one thinks all of their life that they are not an animal then this new mindset could be very jarring, however there is an upside. When we are aware of some of the inclinations and wants of others then we can find new solutions to problems. By knowing that we are naturally inclined to consume sugar even at cost to our health, steps can be taken to create incentives away from that. In our own lives we can think on the social needs of primates and find better ways to communicate and participate in activities with those we are close with.
The way to find this knowledge is to take the barriers down that we have built to disguise our true nature (quite literally in this case) and observe the ways of modern life. We can analyze eating habits, sexual acts, crime and a myriad of other things to see some of the natural inclinations we as people have. Once we have this then we can put it to work to create a happier and more efficient society. We must first accept our nature and limitations, before we can truly build a great society around them.
Have you ever taken a second to question where your daily motivation comes from? Ever considered what makes you wake up in the morning and begin another day? I for one have. And honestly, it allowed me to consider some remarkable information and ideas about how and why we function.
The human race has three known motivations, three driving forces that get us to do everything we do every day. The first is our motivation to live. For example, when one is thirsty, he or she is motivated to drink a glass of water. This motivation is rather simple and seemingly self-explanatory. A species unmotivated to live will simply cease to. So, of course, we are motivated to live because if we were not, then we would not have made it this far.
Our second motivation is through rewards and punishments. We see this in any modern, capitalist business. If one works hard, they get a raise. If one works inefficiently, they are fired. This idea has been implemented into the majority of businesses for the last hundred years.
We also see examples of this in how our government runs. When people follow the law, they are provided with rights, such as the ability to vote, health services, and basic freedoms. When people break these laws, all those rights vanish and are replaced with forceful imprisonment. Fear to break the law has been a tactic used for thousands of years and has been working relatively well.
Economies and governments, around the world, use this innate response to get us to do what we are told. It is the current primary tool within most first world countries, which is not terrible. It is a lot better than using the first motivation, I would not enjoy a world where we are starved for going above the speed limit. This is why I do not totally hate our current system, but I also do not totally love it either.
The last of the motivations is our drive to expand the knowledge and skills of ourselves and our community. In an experiment to test this third motivation, researchers gave dozens of chimpanzees a simple jigsaw puzzle once a day. There was no incentive of any sort to do the puzzle, no food attached, no zookeeper pushing the chimps toward the puzzle, nothing. Regardless, every day the chimps would work vigorously to complete the challenge. As each day passed, the chimps became experts at these simple games. On average, they continually beat their times from the day before as the weeks went on.
These results made a firm conclusion that there must be a third motivation since neither of the first two were being fulfilled in this experiment. They found that we are simply motivated to learn, which makes complete sense. By improving our knowledge and skills we are more equipped to handle any future situations presented to us; as well as giving us something to be passionate about. Right now, I am writing, and you are reading, because we want to be more insightful on our motivations. We want to be knowledgeable people because the more knowledge we have, the more we can hopefully help ourselves and others around us.
Therefore, with all of this in mind, I wonder why this isn’t our motivation in society? Why do we rely on rewards and punishment, rather than having people simply fulfill their desire to better themselves? I believe the answer to these questions is outdated.
A separate experiment was later carried out, which can be seen as the battle of the second and third motivation. In this experiment, participants were provided with a box filled with tacks, a candle, and matches. The participants had to find a way to keep the candle lit as it stood off the ground, only using the materials provided. One group of participants were given the same amount of money no matter how long it took them. The other group was told that they would be paid twice as much if they performed in the top twenty-five percent. The results found that the group given no additional reward did much better than the group with a reward.
Now, if you have not already figured it out, the way to solve this problem is to realize that the box containing the tacks can be used as well. So, the participants had to light the candle and tack the box to the wall and then rest the candle in the box. This made the experiment difficult since the tools were not obviously presented. When the second experiment began, the box was left out and explained as a fourth item. This time, the group with the incentive outperformed the other.
The conclusion drawn from this data is that rewards and punishments work better for simple jobs. This makes sense, as we tend to get tunnel vision when we are pressed for time, rather than having all day to carry out an action. The thing is, a hundred years ago, tunnel vision was okay, jobs were simpler back then. In the early 1900s, roughly five percent of jobs used cognitive thinking skills. Now, around thirty-five percent of jobs use those skills, and it is only uphill from here.
Being in the middle of the digital age, the human race has never needed to be as creative as we are now. Jobs are requiring outside of the box thinking, and our current business structure is not built for it. This system uses a form of motivation that is becoming increasingly counterintuitive.
So, which system is better? What structure could allow for the betterment of both laborers and the businesses themselves? And I’m going to do something a bit unconventional here, I’m not going to answer this question. I can not think of a solution that does not require ideal situations or one that is remotely feasible in this day and age.
This is why I will leave you with a question with no answer. Rather than writing a solution I do not totally agree with, or one I do not totally understand, I would like to hear your input. So, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].
What do we need to survive? When trying to find the answer to this question I scrolled through nearly a dozen websites and was disappointed to find that every website differed from the other. With few commonalities, such as water, food, and shelter, there appeared to be no set list of necessities for survival. Some sites would stress the importance of communication, others the significance of air, and some elaborated on the need of a companion. Yet disappointingly there was no finalized list.
Now I should probably backtrack a little bit. Why in the world was I searching for something so obvious? We pretty much know what we need for survival since we do it every day. I started the search in an attempt to answer another question altogether. How do humans need the same things, yet want different things? This may seem like a dumb question, but it confuses me nonetheless. If we all intake and require the same things to survive then I would assume we would also desire the same things. Think of humans as machines. If we all input the same thing then we should output the same thing as well.
This thought is what led me to conclude that we don’t actually require the same things to survive. Yes, we need food, water, shelter, but we also need so much more than that. Some people need more comfort. Some need more adventure. And some need more safety. We need these things in the same sense as anyone needing water. Do you ever get that feeling that you need to do something? You just need to text that person back, need to go on a run, need to punch a wall. These things we do not physically need, but we definitely mentally need them.
How does a mental need compare to a physical need? If I do not drink water for two weeks I will die, but will I also die if I do not cry in my pillow for an hour after a breakup? I probably won’t physically die, but I may mentally die. My emotions will bubble up until I need to release them and if I do not then those emotions will get buried away and cause a sensation of emptiness, a feeling of lack of feeling. Those emotions I once felt so strongly will backfire and mentally kill some part of how I define myself.
So, what is to be made of this? How similar are our physical and mental requirements for survival? I suppose I would argue that they are more alike than we first think. This mental entity we consider to be so different than our physical one seems to be no different at all. Both mental and physical illnesses are problems that humans endure which limits our well being. Mental and physical barriers restrict us from obtaining skills and knowledge. And physical health affects our mental health as much as our mental health affects our physical health.
This is what leads me to believe that there is an unnecessary divide between the mental and physical world. When thinking of your body, you can divide it into separate parts. You can wiggle your toe and then lift your arm. A similar process occurs when trying to divide our mental components. You can think of what makes you angry, and what makes you sad. You can divide the happy and sad of each day, just as well as you can divide the physically relaxing and exhausting times of that same day. Our brains are no different than any other body part. It has a purpose and does that purpose every day. It is supported by other organs, which have their own purposes, and functions as long as all the other organs do so.
I mean, if a brain was a magical thing that floated in our heads, completely self-sustainable, then sure I would say there is no correlation between these two worlds at all. Instead, the current belief states that brain activity is fueled by the same energy our muscles are fueled by. Instead of magic thoughts floating around in our head, we have neurotransmitters that transfer emotion and memory throughout the brain to form the very thoughts that make us who we are.
I believe our mental and physical worlds are a lot closer than we think. The more I have compared the two, the more I have realized how similar they are to one another. How the brain truly operates is no different than any other body part. It has a function, executes the function and maintains its ability to continue functioning.
This leaves me with a question that I ponder often. If our mind requires certain feelings and emotions to continue existing, similar to how we require the intake of water, then can people ever change? If we need to feel and act in certain ways, then how can someone ever change who they are? If someone needs to feel a thrill every so often, then will they ever be able to settle down with a family? If someone needs to spend their Fridays alone will that special someone ever have a chance of enjoying going out? Can we change if we need certain things to mentally survive?
So my final question is, can our personalities change? I believe the answer is no. I think we can change how we act on the outside, yet our core-selves never change. For example, if a little kid is scared by a dog, then he or she will always be afraid of dogs, but as time goes on they will become more used to the small amount of fear they feel every time a dog passes by. The fear will not decrease, but rather the ability to control the fear will increase.
I think this can pertain to any personality trait our minds currently possess. Yet, like all of these posts, I do not know for sure, and nor does anyone. This is why I encourage you to comment below or email me at [email protected] to continue this discussion.
** Interestingly, I do not agree with this belief anymore. And I have written a post since that address identity as an even changing clay-like-form that bends infinitely as we go about life. Enjoy! The Yin and Yang of Identity **
