Dan Ariely: Are we in control of our decisions?

[17:26]

THE TWO WAYS….

WAY #1:
Due to the brain being way too complex with its 86 billion or so neurons and then trillions of connections between them forming fixed patterns of behavior and thought as part of its evolved plan ,all going on beyond our awareness, it is simply foolish therefore to jump in and be judgmental of anyone in a grand scheme of things once realizing this…… WAY TOO MUCH GOING ON IN THE BRAIN, SO FREE WILL CHOICES BECOME A COMPLICATED PROCESS, where a lot of ‘me’ has nothing to do with ‘me’ at all. We are born into cultural norms, the do’s and don’ts refined accordingly within each nation and region and it is never considered that a persons identity, personality and fixed patterns through life cannot simply switch on and off or just adapt with a click of a finger due to that complexity of brain matter. There’s an expectation to conform with the norms of society instead as though humans are robots and just plug in and play life according to how society expects of you… IF ONLY! Each and everyone of us if inspected in much detail will be found out…Too many imperfections and contradictions will be found, as ironically we all gladly praise or ridicule others… Our humanness we easily brush under the carpet when we jump on the bandwagon and find people like Trump despicable but effortlessly waste water and fuel and ignore the dying children of the world among hundreds of other things where we could have done and do much, much more to contribute to a better world ourselves and we know it. WE ARE NOT BAD PEOPLE FOR NOT OBSERVING THE REAL ‘ME’ HONESTLY… It is part of how the brain evolved to help us survive…

The brain creates mind to be appropriate searching for survival, it has no interest in rational or irrational, it will gladly do anything it takes and through the clever ego that brain developed in all of us it keeps the lens set onto I LOVE MYSELF AND MY WAY IS A or THE COOL WAY!….If only others were like me, so righteous and well-meaning, bla bla bla…. This is the general theme of most peoples mindset… The brain creates mind to avoid observing all the misgivings we have about ourselves but oh so ready to observe the faults in others…. Being fortunate to observe this actual process, beating the skillful ego to then admit, an individual can then begin a humbling process which in turn will activate the compassion jets… Understanding ourselves, means then we open the door to understanding others properly and this creates a real loving feeling and not a defensive, based around me convenient showy love of which I DO AND YOU DO TOO… WE ARE A MESS IN THAT RESPECT AND LET’S NOT DENY IT! So….. Street epistemology is great once we can find that honest observation, shifting from convenient ego, to then discuss issues calmly, breaking things down without anger and frustration getting to real truths…. Debate and discussion with grace and elegance, creating a great platform to help change the deep rooted irrationally formed individual and cultural views, encouraging myself and others into a more reason based, selfless mindset. Ultimately inspiring each other to shift from ego defense we weren’t aware we had in the first place.. Smiles all around

WAY #2:
Show anger and frustration in a controlled manner… Even when knowing that we are full of contradictions and imperfections ourselves, within that messy humanness it does not mean we do not strive to progress in certain areas of life and just tread a long carefully not to upset people… F*CK THAT! Personally, for example, I find that people who cannot observe that their religious faith is just an indoctrinated idea that they lazily keep for a lifetime passed down generation after generation, failing to notice that if they were born in another region of the world they would most probably be influenced to believe in something completely different, gladly flowing with all sorts of other weird customs and rituals. We know this because of the statistics readily available of religiosity types in different regions and nations, a 6 year old can make sense of a religion map and see what’s really going on!… People failing to make this very simple observation in favor of keeping their comforting belief system are an absolute disgrace and dishonest! It’s 2017 and the failure for the vast majority of religious believers to see why they truly formed a belief system highlights how pathetic humanity is on a whole… It indicates that people of today, not just the religious in the example play the caring and the righteous through their opinions but really just a convenience to suit…. DISGRACEFUL AND VERY SAD THAT THIS IS MOST OF US!!! Gladly dishing out the dirt on others, completely pathetic for not observing ourselves honestly in the process…. THIS IS THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE WORLD, INCLUDING ME! AND YES YOU TOO, you’re not exempt, just because you ‘liked’ The Mind Voyager page…

Oh my goodness, how we want our space respected and demand that our views heard and all round up and attack on Blair, Rothschild, Bush, Trump, bankers, politicians and so on as though we are some kind of lovely people doing the right thing all the time caring for humanity…. BO**CKS! We are lazy, the masters of pathetic… We do one nice thing for show (usually a guilt trip, or to attract opposite sex or something) all too often and forget our misplaced empathy and our wastefulness. 2017 and we are so stupid like that! Praising god/s giving thanks, hoping for heaven or reincarnation into a Prince/ss and not a pig…Atheism vs Religion and both sides both as pathetic as each other assuming they are such lovely people failing to observe their ego driven stinky selfishness in so many aspects of life away from that actual topic on a daily basis…. It is something that future, advanced generations will giggle at, laughable ignorance, humanity simply unable to observe the ego screwing itself over, settling on a delusional status ranking it created for itself!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

To summarize…. 🙂 I like to use WAY #1 60% of the time and WAY #2 15% of the time and something in between 25% of the time… Now if you excuse me I have some contradictions to do and then pretend to be a lovely person… 😉 I can only be honest, this honesty I believe is the beginning of real progress… If you want a self help guru with fake solutions, chiseled chin and bright white bleached teeth, please go elsewhere. I HAVE FLUFF IN MY BELLY BUTTON, VERY NAUGHTY THOUGHTS CONTINUOUSLY AND MY FARTS STINK!

By Panayiotis Stavrou

[Video source: TED YouTube link]