by Roland Majla | August, 2023 | Roland Majla
Words put in action affecting your lifestyle, way of thinking and seeing the world? Have you ever wondered why? As the years and even decades are passing by, you wear different clothes, you have different hair style, you listen to different music and so on. Have you made any conscious decisions to choose your political affiliation, or joining an organisation with various values, or even choose your gender and sexuality? Or perhaps you have been far too open and receptive to external stimuli? It could well be that it’s the words placed in action what’s behind of it all. An ideology is a set of belief attributed to a person a group of people, which aren’t necessarily epistemic. (Zmigrod, 2022) Since the last century politics and politicians of all kinds increasingly have been interested in the ideas of all kinds, ranging from anarchism, communism, democracy, conservatism, corporatism, environmentalism, liberalism and if you find any other ‘-isms’, you are welcomed to pinch them in here. And there is one particular kind which have created a lot of controversies, and that is identity politics. The push and pull forces of the left and right movements have created instability, thanks to the infamy of the leaders of society. So, how are you feeling? When you are feeling far too many feelings your mind can deal with it. Our world is full of all these ideas. And ideas aren’t just that, ideas; they are feelings as well. Some historians look to the past for answers, or rather lamenting the golden past where everything was all safe and sound. Ideas weren’t as intrusive and...
by Roland Majla | July, 2023 | Roland Majla
We are humanity and we are doers, we live by doing things. We start our day by looking into the mirror and wash our face or take a shower. We do this in order to help our body to wake up and get ready to move. And of course, to feel fresher and better. We then get ready to go to work or school or enjoy our leisure time. After finishing our daily plan, whatever they are, we get ready for the evening. Prepare dinner, do some housework and be with family. It’s late in the night and we are still awake, reading or watching something, perhaps working on something in the garage or do some hobby related things. The desire to improve human condition is universal, everyone is doing it. It is 24 hours of ‘to do’ things, I say 24 hours because even when we are sleeping our body works to improve our own body. God forbid, should the ‘old warrior’, that is our heart, stop doing its work even for a minute, game over. It is a two way of seeing this, one is the idea that we do everything because of profit and the other is we do everything because it supports life itself. You decide which one is more attractive to you. But it’s also you who have to be careful on conformist pressure. (Fatas et al., 2018) If your beloved prime minister, or your favourite billionaire, or your boss says, do it! Will you, do it? Some of us are motivated by the desire to fit in, to avoid conflict and gain approval...
by Roland Majla | May, 2023 | Brain chemicals, Roland Majla
“Hello there, how do you do? My name is Mr. Facebook, I’m sure you know me. Look, do you wanna check your new notifications, perhaps scroll through interesting feeds?” “Don’t listen to him! He is distracting you. Instead listen to me, my name is Instagram, and I’m here to instantly offer you the newest photos of your friends? Do you know that hot guy (or girl) you met last weekend down at the pub? So, go on then check it out.” “Mate don’t listen to them; all they do is to distract you! Instead, just come here and unwind. I’ve got loads of funny and absorbing short videos tailored just for you. My name is Tik-Tok by the way.” The More is More So yes, indeed. We have been through this a million times before, yet we still bite the bait every now and then. But why, you may ask. Why is it that they can do this so efficiently, under the wonderful disguise of ‘something new’? We like new things, don’t we? That’s where they come into the picture, because they know what’s new can’t be boring. You never saw it before, you never thought about it before and most importantly you never experienced it before. And they know this better than you, because it is all about that famous or infamous neurotransmitter called dopamine. Once, it was a fitness-enhancing hormone, it helped us to not just survive, but thrive throughout the ages, for instance, the fact that you are reading or listening to this blog is partly responsible for dopamine. Dopamine, the wonder hormone, helps you...
by Roland Majla | May, 2023 | Loneliness, Roland Majla
Let’s talk about loneliness. What does it mean to be lonely? Why do we feel it? Are there any good things about being and feeling lonely? People sometimes do feel lonely, but when ‘sometimes’ becomes ‘most of the time’ is what worries us. Right? Abe Maslow said that it’s a fundamental need to have social connections (Elizabeth Hopper, 2020), Erikson was a bit more optimistic, he said that loneliness helps with personal growth (Gross, 2020), Cacioppo pushed this further (Holding et al., 2020), and he said that it can lead to cardiovascular disease. Some of us have a deep feeling of not being good enough, and we hide away from people, feeling unworthy of attention. Those of us who feel this way should start reflecting deeply on the idea of excellence and should start taking steps to avoid a monolithic view of excellence. It’s not you who is worthless! It’s your idea about yourself that may need to be radically re-examined. We often read about people who are projecting their inner world to the outer world (Waytz, 2011), and while there are certainly such kinds of people, they tend to see the world the way they see themselves. But for the purpose of this blog, I will focus more on people who are on the other end of the spectrum. And namely, those who let the world project itself onto them, these are the people who let the wolf into the house. And while the wolf is being a wolf and behaving like a wolf, he does not realize the havoc he creates, and the suffering that follows follows....
by Roland Majla | March, 2023 | Roland Majla, Work
Have you ever wondered why do we have to work? What is work and why does working seem so natural in every country in the world? Is it normal, natural, and healthy? We were part of the jungle, not too long ago. I say not too long ago, because 30 or 40.000 years is not too long from the perspective of our planet’s age. What was it like to wander in the African savannah or in the Siberian plateau back then? And then about 5 or 6000 years ago working became a thing starting with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but it was not until the time of the Industrial Revolution when full-time jobs became part of people’s lives. And then here we are today, where work is everywhere, so are our bills, taxes, and pension schemes. So why do we spend so much of our free time committing to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to work? Some of us are looking for fulfillment, but not so many of us believe that fulfillment can be confused with monetary gratification. Consider the following question when asked to someone on his or her deathbed: What do you wish you would have spent more time doing? I doubt that they would say they would have been better off spending more time eating peanut butter sandwiches, or playing on PlayStation? Although, I guess a tiny minority of us would not mind these activities to do all their lives. I think most of us would opt to say something like: I wish I had spent more time making something meaningful, like studying...
by Roland Majla | May, 2022 | Habits, Roland Majla
What is curiosity? Why are we curious? What makes us curious? Psychology has a few answers to these questions, for instance, there are studies that show that curiosity may arise when we observe discrepancies (Berlyne, 2006), or when we perceive gap in our knowledge (Kang et al., 2009). The conceptual clarity between curiosity and interest is blurred because curiosity involves seeking new information, whereas interest involves seeking exclusively pleasurable information (Donnellan et al., 2022). So, we can see that curiosity has always been with us since childhood because curiosity helps us to better understand the world around us. And this is especially true when we are young and ready for life. You too have probably asked ‘why’ when you were a child. Much to the annoyance of your parents, however, this is something that researchers coin as ‘explanation-seeking curiosity’ (Kidd & Hayden, 2015), this behaviour motivates us to learn about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of life? The younger we are the more questions we ask (some of us do this even in old age)! We want to know about the world, we want to explain the world, and when we have an explanation, then we can have exploration, which in turn improves metacognition. When false illusion evaporates, new reality sets in and then we are ready to go from theory to practice, to experience this new knowledge. Benefits of being curious If there wasn’t any benefit of being curious, we wouldn’t be curious, we would probably be happy with the world around us, even if we shouldn’t be. Motivated by curiosity, awareness of lexical ignorance may lead us...
