No I’m serious. Today at my client site I was subjected to Harassment training (as were everyone else) by a « corporate trainer » and speaker that also happens to be a lawyer and a mouthpiece for FoxNews. You have no clue how difficult it was for me to shut the fuck up especially when she started not making sense anymore.
First she tried to be funny but she’s not and then she tries to impress a room full of artists and also a pack of Quebecois – we’re rarely on board with American enthusiasm and that’s all I’ll say about that – can you say tough room?
Despair...
I have to say that I was expecting something far more radical concerning the topic so that was a relief. But boy did she lose me after she began talking about choice, my personal pet subject. Ah the irony is that this conservative numbnuts was textbook black and white in her approaches to choice and free-will.
First she begins by saying we all have choices but in an absolute manner – yes she said there were consequences but it’s still a false statement. No one has absolute choice and free-will. It’s a pipe-dream, an illusion. No one has a choice in hair growth, it just grows. No one has a choice in skin color; it’s the color it is. And even when you do have a choice, it’s more limited options than the « free as a bird » bullshit she was screaming out loud in the make-shift auditorium. Say you want Alfredo sauce on your pizza when you order it and the restaurant doesn’t make Alfredo sauce well your choice has been made for you. There is no choice, only cost analysis or as Dawkins calls it, Evolutionary Stable Strategy.
But I wasn’t about to get into that kind of debate at work, though I felt like tearing her a new one in front of everyone. Temptation, why do you torture me so?
But it gets worse. She pulled a FoxNews on us. If you ever watch FoxNews notice how many times the anchors and talking heads say “some people say”. Well during her speech she was talking about happiness and choice and how we chose to be happy and then, wait for it, “scientists have proven that it’s by choice” HUH?
At this point I felt like asking the people next to me to tie-wrap me to the chair. Happy by choice? What kind of insane troll logic is that? Of course the masses don’t question the statement that begins with “Scientists have proven”, they just swallow it up as scripture. But seriously, what scientists? Please show me the science telling us that I’m an unhappy misanthrope by choice. Because last I read emotions are the product of chemistry and hormones. Just go tell someone suffering from depression that he just needs to snap out of it chose to be happy. That’s new-agy bullshit at best and bad advice to give to anyone. I know how depression works and it’s not the product of choice, it’s the product of brain chemistry.
Then it gets better because she completely fucks it up in the final stages of her speech. Words can hurt people. I agree. You can completely destroy a person with a single word. That much is true. But if we apply her logic of happiness by choice this cannot happen. If you are happy because you chose to be so, this means you are impervious to outside influences, i.e. you are probably severely retarded but what people say to you will not impact you, therefore sticks and stones. Because happiness is not about biology, chemistry and the environment it’s about choice you see. The choice to be happy implies you chose not to be sad. So words cannot hurt you; you can simply chose not to be hurt by words. By choosing to be happy nothing can ever deter you from your happiness, because you decided to make it so. Heh!
If only the human mind was so easy to condition, we could avert all war and pain right now and forever. After years of staring at wall I’m still a discontented and misanthropic introvert. All the blow-jobs in the world will never make me a happy go-lucky skippy slap-happy Joe shmoe. Not because I don’t want to be or because I’m happy to be sad… I’m just wired this way. Some brilliant writers with everything in front of them break and kill themselves. They were smart; they could have willed themselves happy, right?
The problem is you can’t will yourself to be happy, no matter what the Buddhists say or the new-agers and the self-helpers. Sometimes you brain is just wired in a certain way or you were raised in a shitty environment or both. People and their personality are the product of their biology, chemistry, what they do to their bodies and their environments and to an extent their history.
You can’t reduce a person to a choice especially when there’s so little choice, so little options. But in the conservative mindset, it works out well because whatever happens to a person can always be blamed on that person. It’s all neat and tidy with a nice little bow on it. The conservative mind comes from a need to have to world to be structured and simple to understand and organize. Well the world doesn’t work that way. The universe is seemingly infinitely complex as are its participants.
I simply just can agree. What else can I say, because my mind just is astounded to see how much we think alike.
I’ll conclude this with: What concretely can we do to change it, when the rest of the world acts like a pack of sheep? Discouraging…
Baaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh I dunno
But I am a sheep to my own delusions. I just wish people would ask more questions. Had I spoken up, I would once again be the only one speaking up.
Kind of reminds me of the “What does God need with a starship?” moment. But I digress.
Very interesting. I agree with what you wrote about the brain sometimes being “hard-wired” for a propensity toward happiness or depression. A doctor friend told me there is a possibility that their is a correlation between telomere shortening and depression. This doesn’t prove causality, but it indicates another possibility that some people just, biologically, have a tougher time getting over the tough times. Some people are able to bounce back while others don’t do that so well. I’ve always wondered what makes the difference between the two.
I’ll write more later, as I have to leave now for a meeting!
Just look at PMS and how it influences mood swings in women. That’s brain chemistry.
They’ve CAT scanned obese people as they were given odors of cheeseburgers and their frontal cortex were innudated with dopamine rendering their ability to make reasonable choices very limited, hence why they can’t stop eating despite strong will power (there are other factors also, the human body will lie to you to keep you eating but thats another long long post) and again thats brain chemistry.
You smile and it triggers hormonal bursts in your brain acutally making you feel good.
Theres an area of a woman’s breast that when carressed triggers a hormonal discharge in the brain that creates the feeling of bonding.
The brain is one big chem lab. We’d like to think we are creatures of free will and reason, but we are slaves to our hormones and our feelings. Sure not as much as an adolescent, the ultimate chem lab junkie, but we are what we are. Free will looks great on paper, but it’s just not so. We have it, just not the way we think we do.
Interesting point about smiling… This could also lend a little support to people’s idea of “choosing” to be happy. Have you ever heard the advice to “pretend” you’re happy and smile a lot, and you will eventually feel it? OK, I’ve never tried it because when I’m upset about something, I don’t want to smile at all! But maybe there is *some* merit to that advice.
Case in point – my brain is obviously hard-wired for scifi TV. Doesn’t matter how bad my day is, if I watch a new episode of Battlestar or Lost, I instantly feel better.
Yes but sometimes all the endorphins in the world do no good. Trust me.
Oh, I believe you!
She should have said that there are certain choices that people can make to make themselves have better lives. This is just common sense. We make choices all the time, and many of them involve and make an impact on how we feel. Of course we don’t have complete control over everything, but in general we have ways of dealing with things. Perhaps not ideal ways, and there are plenty of things that influence us, but the way you are talking here implies that we are as helpless to change things as a fly is to resist the flyzapper. I don’t think that this is always, or even generally true.
By the way, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here. Good to “see” you again.
Hey Alston. Good to see you again.
Yes and no. But we have very little control in our lives, without leaving it to determinism. It’s more like a chain reaction. Events in the past have pretty much set up what you are today, that much is obvious. This experience shapes your future. Human behavior has limits in options and people through culture, customs, taboos brain wiring, capacity, health and so forth are prompted to act according to an established script. Much like a very complex computer. Mathematicals IFs, ANDs, ORs etc. We’re just machines with functions. This doesn’t mean we can’t have fulfilling and good lives. Just saying we’re not these mystical beasts with untapped unlimited potential the Deepaks and Tony Robbins of this world would have us believe so we buy their books.
(I’m not sure where to reply :s)
hum, ok. I completely understand where you’re coming from with this. however, how do you expect to be surprised? I’m not questionning your idea, I’m really just curious as to how you see surprise fitting into this image you’re giving us.
I do agree that most of what we are is predetermined (and post determined since decisions made in the future will unfortunately be dictated by our past).
Where I don’t agree is that we are machines. Granted, 99% of humans makes me want to change race. I wouldn’t mind being a cat, or a giraffe, or whatever would keep me from seeing the stupidities we’re capable of. But we are exactly that. Humans.
And that may be why we crave surprise, that may be why we (some of us anyway) live for it. Hope in life, hope in humans? Who knows. But something’s bound to happen once in a while that doesn’t suck.
My reference to the human machine is pertaining to the no-superstition aspect. I don’t see anything magical in a human being. We are animals, more evolved animals, but animals just the same. Slave to our genes which are the real masters of our destiny. They will kill the body in order to assure their own survival. Our actions are much more dictated by our gene’s needs than by our wants. It is foolish to believe that we can be some kind of mystical meta-potentate. Most people CAN’T and WON’T change. When they do (me included) then I am genuinely surprised.
Plus there are social issues that lead to happiness. Simple things like statistical truths. Statistically if you are born poor it is very likely that you will remain poor your entire life no matter how hard you work to remove yourself from poverty. This is not a fault of your own, it’s a social mechanism that is in place that will not permit the majority of people to move out of their social standing. And we all know that social standing has a play in a person’s general happiness. And that’s just ONE example.
Agreed on the mystic crap, 100%
But I refuse to let logic and statistic cloud my hope… It’s not being blind. I accept everything you just said, and I do think and reflect about it often. I just choose to turn my eye once in a while, and hope.
Believe me, if I was convinced that I would live my entire life the same way it has started, I don’t think I would want to even stay alive.
Just because I’m a die hard materialist doesn’t I hold no hope or don’t work to better myself or life, it doesn’t mean I hold no enjoyment in life. That’s the biggest hurdle in explaining materialism, it’s such a blunt instrument, people mistake it for nihilism.
(I hope you don’t think I think that about you… not after everything you have taught me
)
Sometimes people think my outlook is bleak. I maybe misanthropic but I still take great joy in the dumbest things… and you flatter me