I remember someone made the remark that control is the key to happiness. Thinking of the word control conjures up feeling of mastery, in power, certainty and ability to manipulate. Yes, if you can control you can do whatever to suit yourself. If you can afford a car or better still a helicopter, you have control of your commuting and do not have to wait for buses or stuck in the traffic jam. If you own a firm you can determine you own working time and not the other way round.

The two examples cited are related to money. More control actually comes from political power. If you are the superior you can command your subordinates. If you are the president theoretically you can control the life of all people in your country. Even if you are just a primary school teacher you can still control your students. Control gives us a sense of superiority and feeling of in power.

People not in control seldom feel happy. If you can't control your own body you are no where near to happiness. Patients with Broca’s aphasia often get frustrated of their ability to express their thoughts; people with Parkinson’s disease are more susceptible to depression; and a complete paralysis of body is likely to leave one in complete dejection.

Thus the first and foremost is the control of one’s body, movement, behaviour and mind. While controlling your own life is of utmost important, people are far more interested in controlling other people’s lives. However controlling others is by far the hardest part because everyone resists control from others. teenagers don’t like to be controlled by their parents. Everyone undergo such rebellious age to find their own identity and to be in control of their lives. The one thing human always wanted to control is our affinity to others. The people that I love vs the people that love me, this is the hardest problem in love but unfortunately there is no way to control love.

Although our control of other human’s behaviours is rather limited our control of inanimate objects is quite remarkable. Human beings have been attempting to control nature since the early time of civilization. Technology can thus be described as the study of controlling nature: how to predict and change things. From the weather, the living condition, the food we eat to the sex of our children and our health. We intend to know everything so that we can manipulate nature at our own will. Sadly there is always resistance to control both from nature itself and from within the human race.

These group of people are known as religious people. In fact such people hold a totally different view on happiness, that is, contentment. They think that we shall all be contented with what we have and not demand for more control of nature, especially area of life and death which deemed to infringe on god’s sovereignty. According to them nature is the creation of god thus should not be tampered with. We should render the power of control to god, essentially he is the highest controlling power of the universe.

Whether god did create this universe is a moot point. here we shall focus on the notion that contentment can bring happiness. It sounds plausible that if you are always contented then you should be happy always. Now consider this. In the first example if you are stuck in a traffic jam since you can't do anything you just have to console yourself with the thought that everyone else is also in the jam. That is when people have the idea that contentment can bring happiness. However arguably if you are given the ability to clear the traffic jam and go home sooner won't you be happier then? Thus such contentment shall be seen as a failure to control and the adaptation of psychology in order to reduce the frustration due to the failure.

Human only submit the power of control when they feel that they can't control. In the ancient time people can't control (or predict) rain fall so they submit (ascribe) the control to god and let him assume control. Human today have marched a long way from rain dances rituals to get rain. With the advancement of meteorology human are now capable of rainmaking by cloud seeding thus controlling rain. Why shall we give up this control and be contented with a long draught and withering plants?

The same logic applies to other areas of science. Once we were ignorant so we submitted the power to god but now that we know how to control why should we give it up? If we can determine the genetic of our children, our lifespan, our birth and death or even our destiny and afterlife, why shall the religious people stop us?

p/s just realize that this relentless pursuit of control is similar to the notion of

Transhumanism >H

How the marginalized becomes the mainstream

当异议变成主流

Throughout history we learned that the human society is never homogenous. There are all sort of people that exist and the mainstream have to deal to each of them accordingly. From the black/ slaves, the feminists, the animal rights advocators, to the disabled and homosexuals, from the political activists to the religious ones, everyone wants to find a place in the society. Most of these group started as dissent from the mainstream views (e.g. Christianity emerges among the Judaism society) then slowly gain the acknowledgement and support of the public and finally emerges as the mainstream (hegemony), to suppress another dissent. The article discusses about the manufacture and processing of the dissent and how do they

Observe the analogy between an individual and a group of people.

Step 1 the body

You will need a body, which is an organization with tones of members. In this democratic society, quantity is everything. If you can prove that your organization is a significant source of votes worthwhile of supporting you should have no problem in exerting political influence. Anonymous reporting during balloting is usually the way.

Step 2 the behaviour

Action of a body is termed the behaviour. The group need to act out in order to gain attention. Protest, leaflet distribution, seminar are common ways.

Step 3 the history

Doing the usual stuffs above is insufficient – you need a potential issue to exploit. The general public are forgetful they tend not to focus on the general idea unless a specific cases erupted. For instance the government will only take steps to improve road safety when there is a prominent figure died in a traffic accident, or consider about the welfare of the disabled when there people sacrifice unnecessarily – tragedy or litigation is always the tipping point.

But my point here is not just an exploitable issue, the sensational effect fades away quickly with time. We should go beyond an issue: telling story about the group members involved. This is how you can make the appeal long lasting and image of the organization become clearer. Without history, the society members are just a bunch of people without face.

Remember remoteness promotes callous and indifferent, only a true story can break down the barrier and evoke empathy from the public. Only then they will realize that these people are real humans with feelings.

距离让人保持冷漠。对人们来说边缘团体只是面孔模糊的一群。唯有真实的故事才能让人感同身受，明白他们其实也是有血有肉的一个人。

Step 4 the soul

As the group evolved the ideology of the organization will evolve as well. Now they need reasons to back them up and arguments to put forward so that they can fight with the mainstream ideologically. Because no matter how great is the grassroots movement in step 3, it is ultimately the ideology that will make a difference in the parliament. Thus the ability to convince the MPs lies on how sophisticated and impressive the philosophy of the group.

学说是一个组织的灵魂。学者之流最喜欢搞形而上学的东西，但理论却是说服反对派最有效的方法。

Notice the sequence of the emergence (body -> soul). All organization went through the same struggle before they can revolutionize the mainstream. They first gather with a rudimentary believe then as the institution become more established the philosophy will serve to reinforce their action and believe. People do not become communists after reading das capital by Karl Marx, instead they join the body then only they start reading it to justify their actions; the same goes for Christianity and other religion, most people are converted bodily (step1) first due to the friendly environment, only then soully (step 4) by reading the bible.

人们通常都是作了选择才为自己的行为找出理论的根据，偏见才会这样不断自圆其说。

You should realize by now that why the Establishment likes to suppress the freedom of association (step 1) and freedom of expression (step 4). The government tends to use media control as a means of social control to repress any dissent. However thanks to the internet and the emergence web 2.0, dissent is now so unconcealable. We are now heralding the Wiki era where everyone has the rights to voice out their opinions and freedom to express it to the world, uncensored! The feminist can come up with their own feminist theology, the political activists has the liberation theology, the homo group have their queer theology. The Vatican still holds the dominant interpretation of the bible but they are no longer the sole and exclusive interpretations. Everyone has a say in interpreting God’s words. I always believe that debate can help to clarify things. Now I would prefer to see the church employing their logic and reasoning to fight in various arguments rather than just employing violence to oppress all the different voices, as they used to do.

第二代网络宣告的是自由言论的时代：每个人都能以自己的观点来诠释理论，打破了过去一言堂的僵直状态。唯有百家争鸣，才能让真理越辩越明。

Labels: politics

How instinct can cheat you

There are something you believe instinctively but might not be correct. The complexity and symmetric of the universe inclines us to suppose a Creator that designed everything. However the truth is the universe and life on earth evolves by natural selection without any divine intervention. In his latest book The Delusion of God Richard Dawkins argues that our sense of religion and creator is an accidental by-product of our judgment and intuition of the external environment. Just like children like to ascribe purpose to everything, we all tend to think that the world was designed with a distinct purpose. This religious instinct is misleading us into believing in god.

On the contrary, there are also things that you reject instinctively (a heresy) might be true.

People think that the notion that we have sexual desire towards our parents are absurd and ridiculous. However the idea of Oedipus complex now has wide currency in explaining of the origin of the super-ego. According to Freud, during the phallic stage of a child’s psychosexual development, the infant will direct his sexual desire towards the mother. This process is important for the development of the normal sexual behaviours in the later stage of life.

When instinct fails

Instinct might be fallible and may not be a reliable guide in understanding the reality about ourselves. However they could be very useful in some areas thus conferring certain selective advantages necessary for the survival of the species.

On the same ground of Oedipus complex, people ask why we are not sexually attracted to our siblings. See Genetic sexual attraction. We tend to choose partner with similar level of education, background and upbringing, sharing the same sphere of life and hobbies but we never consider our siblings as one of the options. The reason is clear: it simply disgust us to think of having sex within the family members. Just like animals, human have a natural aversion to inbreeding. See Westermarck effect We will instinctively think that incest is wrong. There is a biological basis for not favouring incest because it will lead to an increase in homozygosity and an accumulation of deleterious recessive genes.

So what will happen when the instinct is not working? It is not surprise to find that parties involved in incest do not feel the guilt because they are not driven by the instinct (of aversion). In this respect we can deduce that: people don’t do incest not because we consciously choose not to, but we are refrained from doing so by our instinct. Using the same argument, for someone that have incestuous relationship, they don’t consciously choose to do so but there might be some defects in the protective instinct. They shall not be morally liable for that because they don’t have a say in this. Arguably this is a genetic defect that resulted in a psychosexual disorder.

Similar argument could be applied to homosexuality. You don’t have sex with people of the same sex not because you consciously avoid to, but it is the inbuilt biological mechanism that discourage that. Thus for somebody who is born gay, they do not make the choice of being gay but rather the protective instinct is malfunctioning.

However the biological defect conclusion is reached basing on the instinctive notion (again!) that heterosexual is normal and natural. But nature is somehow more complex than we think. In the animal kingdom homosexual behaviours are ubiquitous which arguably has some evolutionary advantage to minimize intraspecies aggression. Nature is rarely divisive (polymorphy) but rather there are normal distribution in all traits and inheritance e.g. height and weight. In this respect μ ± 2σ only defines the majority not the normality.

Labels: metaphysics

s1 if you want to know:

while knowing nothing causes fear, knowing everything is even worse.

People are fearful when they know nothing – they are rushed to the A&E and diagnosed with a pneumothorax or extradural haematoma, etc.. The moment they know about that they are terrified and no amount of explanation from the doctor can dispel the doubt and uncertainty. Sometimes people wonder that if they were the doctor they wouldn’t be so afraid. The truth, perhaps, is the complete opposite. Having spending five years un the med school and learning pathology well, the doctors will know every single details of his disease, including the worst complications and the worst outcomes that it could be.

Then who are the fearless ones? In my opinion these are the medical students half way through their course: they only have a smattering of medical knowledge and yet they think they know the nature of the illness well. They understand the jargons used so they are not baffled by the explanation offered by the doctors or books; in the same time they don’t know how bad things can go so they can just leave everything to the doctors. So I concluded that: people with incomplete knowledge fear the least.

一知半解的人最无畏。

Then I realized why people get married before they move in and live together. They think they know each other so well but in fact they don’t know about the living habits of each others. the fact is: You won’t marry someone that you don’t know, similarly you won’t marry someone that you know thoroughly. (this is the other explanation of why people don’t do incest.) That’s why all the religious people forbid cohabitation because it is such an effective way of seeing how your spouse will behave once you two move in together that it actually causes marriage rate to decline. After living together for some time you will probably rejoice that luckily I didn’t commit myself so early.

Thus to reiterate, for those who wants to know more to make an “informed decision”, while knowing nothing creates fear, knowing everything is even worse.

s2 if you don’t know

In case of doubt, make it sounds convincing

If you can fool everyone, you are the winner.

Corollary: if you can fool everyone, including yourself, you will be the happiest person on the earth.

When I was volunteering myself as a patient, I had the opportunity of observing other students with different style of clinical presentation. I was so impressed by some students who managed to present the history so well that the examiners even nodded as if in complete agreement. Essentially what he is presenting is only the pre-set history but he just have the ability to make it sounds so convincing, reassuring and professional, even to the learned medical ears. If I were his patient I will definitely have no doubt in his clinical skills and expertise.

Thus the art of convincing is really an imperative skills for all clinicians, sometimes more important than clinical skills itself. It is a matter of how well you present your stuffs, not how well you know your stuffs. If you seriously don’t know a thing you just need to convince others that you actually know, in order to pass the clinical exam and become a doctor. Most of the time the sense of assurance the patients have will do wonders: we term this as “the placebo effect”. In fact, you shall always take care of the patient’s psychology as well as his physical body.

Even if you ever go into trouble because of your incompetence, the art of convincing will still save your ass in front of the judges. If you can't do that make sure you get yourself a really good lawyer to defend yourself. You will need him some point in time even though you can be confident that you won't become part of the medical negligence doctors. (This is the consensus that we reach after the night discussing ethical problems with Sheng.)

The conclusion: if you can fool all your way through you are the winner by definition. You don’t actually need to be successful, you just need to “appear” successful. Better still if you can fool yourself as well. Keep in mind that you are not deceiving anybody, because you genuinely think that it is the truth. This is the highest level of lying. Not detectable by a lying machine.

Thus to reiterate: for those who afraid that you don’t know enough, master the art of convincing.

s3 you better don’t know

Ignorance is happiness

The art of convincing is applicable to every field of life, but so far religion is the only field that I observe uses this tactic so extensively and effectively. I remembered hearing somebody commented on religion which I think is a classic quote: “people are like that one, the more miraculous and incredible you sound the more they will believe in you.”

Two days ago when I was browsing a forum and I stumbled over an article about the miraculous revival of a Burma monk. The monk claimed that he was died for a few days and he saw God in the heaven. Along his way he observed some people including Buddha being punished in the fire lake, the reason being “they do not believe in the eternal God”. This ex-monk allegedly never heard about Christianity before later become an earnest Christians… see original article

There are some criticism and quarrel ensued but I am not going to comment on this article.

I am thinking about some other questions about religion. There was a poll in the same forum before entitle: will the world be better off without religion? Two years ago my response will definitely be “of course not”. I think I don’t know the answer now.

I have been reading about books like “Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence”. The book tries to explain the fatal attraction between religion and voilence and the susceptiblity of religion to distortion by the extremists. This above article somehow makes me understand what Marx meant by “religion is the opium of the people”. Some religions just appear to be more like a cult. I found myself started to appreciate the fact that Chinese is one the few races in the world that does not have their own religion. I used to be ashamed of that but now I see a good point. One thing I learn from this race is that irreligion is not immoral. People like to accuse atheist of does not believe in god and moral. See atheism. I believe that there is a common universal code of morality that exist outside of human, and god. See moral universalism.

I still maintains myself to be a secularist and atheist. I shall not inculcate my children any notion of religion. They should be morally responsible to themselves, not to me or any higher being.

Thus to reinforce: there are some things like the creation of universe and after life are better left unknown before you can really grasp on the meaning of life. This knowledge won't help you to become a better person instead it can harm you if you don’t know about yourself.

未知生，焉知死。

Thus Ignorance is happiness.

Labels: metaphysics