Day 104: Why We Should “Stop Trying” instead of “Trying Our Best”

Demanding nothing in return for his kindness, the sage eventually obtains everything;

The sage does not accumulate things,
Yet the more he gives to others, the more he has himself.

Having given to others, he is richer still.

Laozi from Dao De Jing

Why haven’t I read this sooner.

The quote above is from the University of British Columbia (UBC) Professor Edward Slingerland’s Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. As the title of this post suggests, it is one of the best books about the psychology of the mind I have read. Slingerland is also Professor of Asian Studies and Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition at UBC. As his academic title suggests, he is a world renowned expert on the relations between ancient Eastern thoughts and modern cognitive science. The quote above is from Laozi (or Lao-tzu, who lived approx. 6th century B.C.E.). He’s the master of Daoism who, as the legend goes, left us with just one Chinese text where the quote above appeared, better known in the West as the Dao De Jing (some translated as “the way of life”).

In fact, I came across his online course Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science before on the EdX platform when I was teaching an introductory course in philosophy a few years back, but I didn’t seriously follow up on it (the course, by the way, is still free, and is great, so I highly recommend to everyone). Why is Trying Not to Try and his work so great? Because it tells us not only why the ancient wisdom of “trying not to try” is right and that the modern idea of “trying your best” is wrong, and how me might make use of the ancient wisdom to make our life today more fulfilling — but through the lenses of modern science. So, even those who may not have the stomach to swallow “ancient Chinese thoughts,” this book can show you through modern scientific ideas how we can practically improve our well-being.

Professor Edward Slingerland before giving his lecture “Trying Not to Try: Early China, Modern Science.” Photo Courtesy of TEDx Maastricht. I highly recommend his EdX course. Apart from his great knowledge, he also has a great voice and is extremely witty in his teaching of such a difficult and complicated subject.

Actually, I wasn’t planning on reading this book at all. I stumbled upon Trying Not to Try while searching for books to read as I was preparing to get on a 14-hour-long cross-country train to travel to work. I didn’t realize that this book had been in my wish list for years, until an automatic message from Amazon.com app reminded me that this book was on sale. I “didn’t try hard” to find a book to read, so I came across this book. Had I “tried harder,” I would have read multiple reviews of multiple books, by multiple authors, and then evaluated which book to buy based on those reviews once they’re mentally tabulated in my mind for a proper cost-benefit analysis. I probably ended up with a different book if I “had tried to hard.” So, because I didn’t try to hard, I thought I could “give Trying Not to Try a try.”

Trying Not to Try has confirmed a lot of things I have always firmly believed about how a life should be lived. And yes, I am aware of the so-called “confirmation bias.” Just because a book confirms my preconception about something doesn’t (and definitely shouldn’t) automatically render it right, right away. I read Trying Not to Try twice during my 14-hour-long journey (yep, it’s a really long train ride) to make sure that what I agreed with about the idea of “trying not to try” is the best way of achieving just about anything is not just a confirmation bias. For instance, the idea that the best action is, surprising to many, a “non-action.” The more we try to do things, the more we usually end up leave things undone. We are living in the world in which most of us are encouraged to “be better than others,” “do more than others,” “get ahead of others.”

The logic behind this? Simple. The idea of “better” is relative, the underlying reason for all of these is to be “better,” which, in essence, is all about comparing yourself to others by ways of the result. When we want to be better, we automatically (and unconsciously) shift our focus from the task at hand to our expectation.

And as modern psychology (as well as behavioral economics) shows, when the task at hand is not received enough attention from us, it often results, ultimately, in failure – sometimes not only that task at hand, but also other related tasks as well. Professor Slingerland uses many examples such as basketball players and golfers who were “in the zone” – playing their best games naturally – only until someone reminded that them that they should “try to keep up with their game.” That’s when the “hot hand” was forced to make error. These players started to make mistakes, mostly unforced (known as “choking”) leading not only to the bad result but also the end of the focus on the task. So, why is “trying” so harmful to what we want to do? Why shouldn’t we be trying? And, ultimately, what exactly is to “try not to try?”

The writing is on the tombstone “Don’t Try.” Photo courtesy of Charles Bukowski Appreciation Thread.

I have been thinking about the question ever since I learned from the author (and a modern Daoist philosopher) Mark Manson’s best-selling The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck that on the tombstone of the legendary writer and poet Charles Bukowski writes “Don’t Try.” I wrote about this in my earlier blog post but I did not further explore what it actually means, perhaps because I did not know what it really meant. Manson, using this same example, of the tombstone writes what he understands:

Bukowski’s life embodies [what seemingly sounds like] the American Dream: a man fights for what he wants, never gives up, and eventually achieves his wildest dreams. It’s practically a movie waiting to happen. We all look at stories like Bukowski’s and say, “See? He never gave up. He never stopped trying. He always believed in himself. He persisted against all the odds and made something of himself!”

It is then strange that on Bukowski’s tombstone, the epitaph reads: “Don’t try.”

See, despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. He never tried to be anything other than what he was. The genius in Bukowski’s work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himself—especially the worst parts of himself—and to share his failings without hesitation or doubt.

This is the real story of Bukowski’s success: his comfort with himself as a failure. Bukowski didn’t give a fuck about success. Even after his fame, he still showed up to poetry readings hammered and verbally abused people in his audience. He still exposed himself in public and tried to sleep with every woman he could find. Fame and success didn’t make him a better person. Nor was it by becoming a better person that he became famous and successful. Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing.

The story of Charles Bukowski is deeply interesting because it creates, almost instantly, the sense of  “cognitive dissonance,” or the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions, in our mind. How can someone who simply did what he liked, and never tried harder, became more and more successful as he life progressed? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, as in, we must strive harder and harder and perhaps never stop? What’s the deal with his success?

Charles Bukowski. Photo courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.

Bukowski didn’t give a fuck about success? Interesting. We might be able to understand why he became successful without even trying. In fact, if we look at modern research from a psychological perspective, backed by scientific research, we humans are:

1. At best at what we do when we are in the “flow” (some use the idiom “in the zone” which have a similar meaning; a psychological concept of deep engagement coined by):

2. At best at what we do when we are not doing it for external rewards or results, but for our own need to fulfill our internal desire; in other words, we are at best at what we do when we, simply, enjoy doing it;

3. At best at what we do when we do it with a clear, not clouded, mind. Our mind can be clouded by all kinds of thoughts including getting a reward; and,

4. At best at what we do when we do it for a purpose larger than ourselves.

There’re a long list of scientific researches from various fields that support these following findings (with which I can provide you; just write me directly to save space). I remember a countless time seeing someone’s doing something so brilliantly, but only until they’re being “applauded” for the work that they do that their brilliance begins to fall apart. Needless to say, it also happens to me a countless time, which may have been the reason for why I have been taking the “non-consequentialist” approach to doing things.

A consequentialist believes that the worthiness of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences.

I, too, used to be a consequentialist.

I used to do things because I wanted a good result, praise, and rewards. And as you may guess, I never got anywhere with my life. I tried to recall when I became an anti-consequentialist, but still couldn’t recall when exactly that I changed. A guess is that it could have been that moment about a decade back when I heard about the reason why the acclaimed director, writer, actor, etc., Woody Allen has never accepted any awards — including 4 Academy Awards (yes, the Oscars), 10 BAFTA awards, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Why? He remarkable said toABC News in 1974:

The whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don’t.

So, Woody Allen (by the way, my favorite movie of his is not Annie Hall, but Whatever Works) never shows up to receive any awards for which he has been nominated. In fact, many critics have already given up on convincing him to “just take the Oscar already” (The magazine Atlantic Monthly, in fact, cries out loud: “Stop Giving Woody Allen Awards, He Won’t Show Up Anyway”). In the sense, Woody is right to have his own standard by which he aspires his work to live. But more to that is the fact that he doesn’t work for any recognition except his own — and he’s remarkably successful. He even implies that indulgences in awards can make you less efficient. Is that true, through?

The genius who disdains the idea of getting an award — from anyone.

Why exactly do rewards make us less efficient?

From an economic perspective, it should be the opposite, isn’t it? Economists believe that humans are driven by incentives. Give them the right incentives and they’ll collaborate, manufacture, and come up with great ideas. But historically, though, I have to say that’s not how great ideas and performances come about. The best-selling author and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli has for us a succinct answer. He writes in The Art of Thinking Clearly:

Science has a name for this phenomenon: motivation crowding. When people do something for well-meaning, non-monetary reasons —out of the goodness of their hearts, so to speak— payments throw a wrench into the works. Financial reward erodes any other motivations.

So who is safe from motivation crowding? This tip should help: Do you know any private bankers, insurance agents, or financial auditors who do their jobs out of passion or who believe in a higher mission? I don’t. Financial incentives and performance bonuses work well in industries with generally uninspiring jobs—industries where employees aren’t proud of the products or the companies and do the work simply because they get a paycheck. On the other hand, if you create a start-up, you would be wise to enlist employee enthusiasm to promote the company’s endeavor rather than try to entice employees with juicy bonuses, which you couldn’t pay anyway.

That is to say, rewards, financial incentives, and material results are not the reason that motivate people to do great thing, or the cause of how great ideas come about. They are the reason that makes the focus of the doers shift from that of the “unconscious passion” to that of the “conscious consequentialist.” As science shows, we automatically let go of the mental capacity to perform once that happens. The legendary swimmer Michael Phelps, too, always remind us of how he never aims at getting a medal when he swims: “I enjoy swimming and it’s just a routine.” Just a routine? — He’s the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 28 Olympics medals! Great minds, pioneers, athletes are those who do what they do because they, “simply” enjoy doing it, and because of that some of them are even excellent in what they do and therefore contribute hugely to the community and society in which they live.

Let me return, on more time, to the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi’s view on why “conscious effort” (the trying to hard) and especially those who “strive are responsible for the world’s ills” are actually not as useful as they think. Slingerland translates the following:

The highest Virtue [de] does not try to be virtuous, and so really possesses Virtue.

The worst kind of Virtue never stops striving for Virtue, and so never achieves Virtue.

The person of highest Virtue does not act [wu-wei] and does not reflect upon what he is doing.

The person of highest benevolence acts, but does not reflect;

The person of highest righteousness acts, and is full of self-consciousness.

Starting from today, I am going to try not to try. 

 

 

Day 103: On Design Culture Part 1 (of Many More Parts to Come)

What’s design?

Many people have asked me this question, and it’s not easy at all to actually come up with just one absolute and definite answer. In fact, as I am going to be teaching a course with a title roughly translated as “design culture,” it might be a good idea for me to try to answer this question in a series of post: Something that I can also utilize as an outline for each of my lecture (clever, right?). Well, you know I always believe that writing is a great great tool to facilitate just about everything. We think in language, so therefore writing is the act of putting words into strings that help you make sense of the chaotic thoughts floating, running, and moving in the mind.

Now, first thing first, I’ll leave the answer to the question above for letter. I think the first thing to discuss here is the meaning of the word we usually hear but don’t usually define.

That word is “creativity.”

The origin of this word is credited to the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947, who is also credited for saying “All (Western) philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”). To Whitehead, creativity simply means the act of “self-creation and self-determination.” He’s talking, of course, about metaphysics, an we are unlikely to get into Western philosophy in this post.

Creativity: This very term that Whitehead had coined, however, has had a great impact on how we think about design. Last time I checked, there’re more than a hundred books with the title “creativity” in their titles in circulation as we speak. Upon browsing them, I didn’t find any special meanings of creativity. It’s all the same old same old “the art of innovation,” “newness that works,” “a quality of a genius.” None of these definitions helps anyone to understand. In fact, the notion that creativity is “a quality of a genius” is just discriminatingly misleading (for the reason that this blog will outline). Many actually believe, in essence, that “design is a product of creativity,” but what exactly is creativity. If the term entails the notion of “creation,” then, aren’t we all creative by default since in order to survive we’d need to constantly “create” (e.g., income, opportunity, etc)?

Let start with a great example of what the thinker Kevin Ashton, a British technology pioneer who after having immigrated to the US co-founded the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a theorist who also coined today’s widely popular term “the internet of things,” calls the “myth of creativity.” This excerpt is from his book How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery (which is one of the 44 books that changed my life): 

In 1815, Germany’s General Music Journal published a letter in which Mozart described his creative process:

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer; say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance.

Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. When I proceed to write down my ideas the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination.

In other words, Mozart’s greatest symphonies, concertos, and operas came to him complete when he was alone and in a good mood. He needed no tools to compose them. Once he had finished imagining his masterpieces, all he had to do was write them down.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)

This is a typical “genius” story. We all know how great Mozart was as a composer, but let’s continue reading:

But there is a problem. Mozart did not write this letter. It is a forgery. This was first shown in 1856 by Mozart’s biographer Otto Jahn and has been confirmed by other scholars since.

This is true. Historians have provided evidence of how Mozart had become who he was — “a great composer” — not by his “ingenuity,” “prodigy” or “inborn quality” just  but by his willpower to work hard, long hour, and ability to go back to the drawing board (or music score) to revise, rewrite, and rethink his creative work. Ashton continues:

Mozart’s real letters—to his father, to his sister, and to others—reveal his true creative process. He was exceptionally talented, but he did not write by magic. He sketched his compositions, revised them, and sometimes got stuck. He could not work without a piano or harpsichord. He would set work aside and return to it later. He considered theory and craft while writing, and he thought a lot about rhythm, melody, and harmony. Even though his talent and a lifetime of practice made him fast and fluent, his work was exactly that: work. Masterpieces did not come to him complete in uninterrupted streams of imagination, nor without an instrument, nor did he write them down whole and unchanged. The letter is not only forged, it is false.”

In fact, historians argued that it might have taken him almost two decades to cultivate his greatness — about 10,000 hours of practicing arguing the author Malcolm Gladwell. Here is what he explains in his masterpiece Outliers: The Story of Success:

This is true even of people we think of as prodigies. Mozart, for example, famously started writing music at six. But, writes the psychologist Michael Howe in his book Genius Explained,

“…by the standards of mature composers, Mozart’s early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Mozart’s childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K. 271) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years.”

The music critic Harold Schonberg goes further: Mozart, he argues, actually “developed late,” since he didn’t produce his greatest work until he had been composing for more than twenty years. To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”

Kevin Ashton, Inventor of the “Internet of Things” at Industry of Things World 2017 Interview

So, what’s creative about Mozart’s music was a result of his ability to oscillate between “what’s been composed and what can be composed.” In Solving Problems with Design Thinking Ten Stories of What Works by Jeanne Liedtka, Andrew King, and Kevin Bennett, this process, similar to that of Mozart’s, can be summarized in the act of carefully answering four questions: What Is? What If? What Wow? and What Works? And I don’t think this comment would make Mozart any less great than he was. His music is timeless, inspiring, and sophisticated — it’s the work of art. But what this comment does is that it “humanizes the notion of creativity” and shines a different light on Mozart as a human being — just like you and me.

David Beckham = Mozart of Soccer? Considering how he “creates” a play that is so harmonious, entertaining, and creative in the soccer field. Is he any less important than Mozart?

I think we should all be happy to hear that instead of thinking less of Mozart as a great composer. He still was, and his music will always be great. It turns out that everyone whom we admire has to go through a similar process of being tested. Excellent soccer players, musicians, artists aren’t born with those skills. So, where does the urge of wanting to see Mozart, and David Beckham, the Beatles, Picasso, etc., as inborn geniuses? Kevin Ashton again:

“The myth of creativity” lives on because it appeals to romantic prejudices about invention. There is a myth about how something new comes to be. Geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole. Poems are written in dreams.

Symphonies are composed complete. Science is accomplished with eureka shrieks. Businesses are built by magic touch. Something is not, then is. We do not see the road from nothing to new, and maybe we do not want to.

Artistry must be misty magic, not sweat and grind. It dulls the luster to think that every elegant equation, beautiful painting, and brilliant machine is born of effort and error, the progeny of false starts and failures, and that each maker is as flawed, small, and mortal as the rest of us.

It is “seductive” to conclude that great innovation is delivered to us by miracle via genius. And so the myth.

Psychologists and biological anthropologist argue that the size and shape of our brains haven’t change so much for at least 15,000 years; therefore, there’s nothing innate in the brains that think “a stone tool is enough” and “we need something better than a stone tool.” What changed, however, was the ability to elevate our cognitive ability to better solve problems and issues of everyday life. A quote from Kevin Ashton: “This is one reason the creativity myth is so terribly wrong. Creating is not rare. We are all born to do it. If it seems magical, it is because it is innate. If it seems like some of us are better at it than others, that is because it is part of being human, like talking or walking. We are not all equally creative, just as we are not all equally gifted orators or athletes. But we can all create.”

The education expert Sir Ken Robinson (whose TED Talk on the subject is pretty pretty awesomest if you haven’t seen it yet) argues that we’re all born creative which, from an evolutionary perspective, is the innate quality with which we are all born. In essence, it’s the quality that allows us to live, communicate, reproduce, revolutionize and move through time. For Robinson, we have become less creative owing to the process of standardization of education, which focuses on giving people, well, the standardizable skill

So, the lessons are simple:

1. First, the idea that “you have to be born creative to be creative is a myth (AKA “creativity myth”); so, let’s undo that idea, once and for all, completely. It’s nonsense, not true, and not useful at all;

2. Second, to be excellent/good/great at something, one has to work for it. Some says it takes about 10,000 or 10 years straight to be an expert on something. It’s true. Our brain needs that much practice, trial and error, tactile learning, to be able to comprehend the variety of experience. If what we think as creative is something “new and useful,” what this means is that it takes that much time for the brain and our body to be comprehend the basics and therefore generate such novelty that works. So, be patient.

3. Third, creativity is a process, and not innate quality (which goes back to the first point), which means that it’s something that everyone, including you and me, could cultivate; and,

4. Fourth, the notion of creativity is built inside all of us (AKA “innate”). The society puts things in hierarchy. Would you say that David Beckham is more talented than Mozart? It would be like comparing an apple to an orange. Just because someone sees Mozart’s music as more important than the art of wiping the floor clean (which I am by the way very good at because I have a very creative way of going about doing it — I am proud of it, hey) doesn’t mean that wiping the floor cannot be creative.

 

 

 

 

Day 103: On Insecurity (and How to Get Rid of It)

Happy New Year!

Well, it’s another first of January — the new year.

We should all think about what we’d like to do this year, what changes we would like to make, and whatever goals we would like to achieve. All of this makes perfect sense. That said, I have been struggling to come up with a “new year resolution.” What do I want to do this year?

Upon reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Book by Yuval Noah Harari, I have been thinking about one very important question:

What makes strangers, who don’t know each other at all, hate each other?

This is a huge question.

Think about it: So many people fight in a war with some total strangers, sometimes to death, whom they have never met before; so many people feel the urge of hating someone they read about in the news even though they have never met or known that someone (in person or not) at all; so many people are being completely absorbed in the business of going as far as to condemn others without even knowing some basic information about the condemned. Why?

Let me start with putting this question toward myself?

Have I ever hated anyone I have never met?

The answer is yes and no.

Who’s the most hated person in the history? How about Adolf Hitler? Do I know him? No. Do I even speak the same language he does? No. Do I know anything at all about him besides those written about him that I had read 4 decades after he died? No.

Of course I do not like Adolf Hitler for an obvious reason.

But before I rest my feeling of disgust on the kind of person he was, I read up on his numerous biographies, watch documentaries about him, and try to understand why he had become who he eventually was — “the face of evil,” many may call him.

That’s, of course, an extreme example. What about those whom I have heard the names of but do not know in person, say, rapists, murderers, malign political lobbyists? Two posts ago, I mentioned to you about how I don’t read news, so, in a way, I can’t really hate anyone on the basis of hearing anything about them through news. So, at the level of information acquisition itself, I probably wouldn’t have any information at all to judge anyone. Yet, even though I have heard about them through news, I would probably think that whatever it is, “experts” should be brought into the picture to investigate the accusations. There’re countless times where innocent people get put in jail for crimes they did not do. There are “public opinion” or the opinion of those who would like to feel emotionally attached and be swayed by sensational news, and the “truth” which is what really happened.

If you ask most people, they’d say that they believe in “truth” and not “public opinion,” but what exactly makes them feel as though their notion of “truth” is not being clouded by what they heard from the news around them? Many of us both conflate and confuse the two: “public opinion” and “truth.” There’s an old saying, “There would be no fire, if there’s no smoke,” meaning that rumors can’t just come out of nowhere. There has to be a source of it otherwise it would not have been discusses, spread, and become news. That’s the “smoke and fire” theory of news. A pretty convincing argument?

In the society today where we all have to find the way to survive, we need to take clues from whatever sources we can to stay afloat. If the news says “Mr. A is bad,” it makes sense for most people to try to dissociate themselves from Mr. A, not hanging out with Mr. A, or even downright and publicly condemn Mr. A. Why? I asked one of my friends who did this in the past — and now regretted it. “I am scared,” said he. What he meant was that he’s scared to be associated with someone with a bad reputation. I continued to press on with a question “why?”

I am afraid because I am nobody. If I am somebody, I wouldn’t be afraid. I still need a job, a career, etc., so it’s important that I do whatever the public eyes believe to be the most appropriate thing to do.

Ok. So, it’s the insecurity. If you’re not secure about your job, your life, your position in the society and elsewhere, of course you would not want anyone to see your being associated with bad things. But even if you tend to know that in your encounter with Mr. A, he is never like that?; or, that you have not given Mr. A the due process?

Insecurity, therefore, is not just a trivial, but a key problem. Why do people feel insecure? Well, the answer to this question would probably need another long post. All I can think of right now, according to my own past experience, is that: I feel personally insecure when I:

1. Need something from someone. When you need something from someone, it’s natural that you can’t afford to be secure because you are relying on that someone to provide you what you need;

2. Don’t have the evidence to support any of my thoughts, arguments, or claims. In fact, the main source of my insecurity comes when I try to argue something that I do not have any evidence to support it. Can there be anything that could make one feel more insecure than this?; and,

3. When I am not being honest. You never feel safe when you have something to hide. Yes, when you’re not honest, you don’t have any ground on which to stand; therefore, you’re not secured as a person, as a being.

So, my advice is: Be secure.

You are who you are: Don’t be dishonest. Don’t claim that you don’t what you don’t know. And don’t accuse other people for your own advantage. It’s easy to ride on a high tide in order to be famous and “safe,” but every time you’re doing it you should always remind yourself that you are walking on thin ice — or be in a situation in which you are likely to upset someone because of your insecurity or cause trouble because of your dishonesty.

Just be honest — then you’ll have no reason to feel insecure.

Now, having read A Brief History of Humankind Book by Yuval Noah Harari, I have come to realize why someone can actually hate a stranger whom that someone has never met for various reasons. Here are some of them:

1. Ideology and religiosity: Liberal versus conservative, left versus right, capitalism versus socialism. I find that this is the most convenient reason for two people who don’t know each other to be disgusted by each other. Nationalism (which is, in essence, an ideology) is a reason why so many people volunteer to go to wars against fellow human beings. The reason for which could simply about the fact that they are from a “different nation” or a rooted belief that their ideology and religiosity makes them less human beings than you are;

2. Implicit bias — also known as implicit social cognition, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner; and,

3. Jealousy.

I want to focus on the last reason: Jealousy.

The historian and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari would argue that jealousy is rooted in our evolution.

Jealously makes you aware of those who have better genes, better living condition, and therefore better chances of survival. We, therefore, feel jealous because we too either would like to survive, or be the person chosen by those with better chance of survival, so that we will get pulled up the ladder of evolution. What happens what you’re not chosen? You bet, you get jealous. It’s a primitive psychological defense so that one could still feel as though one is not completely worthless — it’s just because that person who’s more superior just isn’t all the great. In a way, we’re evolved to see others, even those in the same homo sapiens species, as competitors.

In the author Robert Wright’s gem of a book Why Buddhism is True, the author quotes the psychologists Tooby and Cosmides’ idea about jealously, using an example of the most palpable form of jealousy there is — sexual:

The emotion of sexual jealousy constitutes an organized mode of operation specifically designed to deploy the programs governing each psychological mechanism so that each is poised to deal with the exposed infidelity. Physiological processes are prepared for such things as violence.

The goal of deterring, injuring, or murdering the rival emerges; the goal of punishing, deterring, or deserting the mate appears; the desire to make oneself more competitively attractive to alternative mates emerges; memory is activated to re-analyze the past; confident assessments of the past are transformed into doubts; the general estimate of the reliability and trustworthiness of the opposite sex (or indeed everyone) may decline; associated shame programs may be triggered to search for situations in which the individual can publicly demonstrate acts of violence or punishment that work to counteract an (imagined or real) social perception of weakness; and so on.

Now, back to the present time.

I find that many of us hate people whom we don’t know personally because we’re jealous of them. Accept it, it’s true. They have what you don’t have, they embody the life of those you wish to be yours, and they appear to make things you find so difficult extremely easy. When I was younger, I used to have this feeling — all the time. I hated those who studied better than I did. I hated those who’re better basketball players. I hated those who seemed to get everything done sooooo easily. What wasn’t I that person?

I remember that I disliked Hillary Clinton so much during the election in 2016. This was before I stopped consuming news completely. It’s because I was vouching for Bernie Sanders. Scrutinizing my own thoughts, I couldn’t find anything about Hillary Clinton that was so bad. True, she might be doing sketchy things like a private server or her emails, but what do I really know about the impact of that? I got completely observed in the news and discussions against her to the point that I, who did not (and still do not) know Clinton, felt as though I could never have dinner on the same table with her. Looking back, I feel nothing but shame.

But hey, to be a Hillary-hater was pretty cool then. If you didn’t like her, you’re presenting yourself as a liberal non-conformist who said “enough is enough.” So, I was riding that tide for my very own benefit. I wanted to be known as a liberal non-conformist. It’s the different ideology, implicit bias, and probably jealousy (that I wasn’t as successful as she was) that drove me into entering the anti-Clinton troops. I was so immature…What’s the point of judging someone whom you don’t even know based on news about them? What if someone write something bad about you, would you be okay for people to hate you — without even knowing you — based on those news?

It took me to get to know that person I thought I hated, for me to realize that, “Wait, why did I hate this person before?”

That’s a revelation for me. Jealously isn’t a fact. It’s a subjective preconception of someone and something based on my own insecurity (ta-da!). I feel jealous of my little cousin because “she’s so young and energetic.” I feel jealous of my not-so-young male cousin because “he’s so young, muscular, and good looking (he does look like a famous Thai actor).” And I feel jealous of my mother sometimes because “she knows everything about finance (since she’s a banker for 30 years). Now, why do I feel jealous? Because I don’t have what they have. It’s as simple as that, but these are people that I personally know: My cousins and my mother.

What about those whom I don’t know?

Well, I have to admit that I don’t feel jealous of anyone or anything, as of this very point in time. It’s for the same reason, but in reverse, to the reasons why I am jealous of my cousins and my mother: I don’t think I lack anything that anyone else have.

I have a good (great actually) health at this point in time (and knock on wood). I get to read, think, and write every day (what else can one ask for, right?) I get to meet those whom I care about whenever I want. My life is not perfect. I am not rich. But it’s fulfilled, so I don’t feel the urge to exercise my sense of jealously beyond my cousins and my mother. In other words, I feel secured. 

So, yes, I think we human beings are naturally insecure, so do whatever we can to survive, including “trying to eliminate those who are above you (and therefore the source of jealousy).” That said, this is not the world I would like to live in, or would like those whom I love to grow up in.