“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” ~ Blaise Pascal
this page talks about individual behavior& its drivers in the context of Sociology … relationship between two individuals and in a group are addressed on subsequent pages.
understand your own behavior
folks wonder, why, in general, i don’t ask questions about them ..?
first of all, i am an INTP .. & if you don’t know what it means .. search google for INTP / MBTI … INTPs are highly introvert people and there are no casual conversations with them .. & most people are not ready for a deeper conversation .. so an INTP avoids having a conversation unless he / she knows deep about the subject to begin with … an example of this is the answer to this question itself .. now onto Physics:
according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics, you can’t find the location of the particle by throwing light at it, because as soon as the light hits the particle & returns to you, the particle has already moved on to a new location … applying the same concept to human behavior, when people are asked a question, first they think why the other person is asking the question & what is expected as a reply; moreover, they tell you what will make you (questioner) happy, and in some cases, what will make you sad; so, the answer is given in a context; therefore, the answer may not be given with honesty; i.e. is not the best based on their knowledge and experience, hence, doesn’t serve the purpose for an INTP – in search of truth and not to have a casual conversation.
a frequently asked question in interviews is, where would you like to see yourself in five years …?
imagine what will happen or how the interviewer would take if you give an answer as “the same” or “i have no clues” .. so you cook up something to pass the interview … the fact is that most (definitely not all) people in this world have no clue what they will be doing in next five years and so end up doing the same job throughout their career … but let me share real data based on my own life .. looking back, the most i spent on a job was 4 years … so assuming i knew what i would do in 5 years from an interview is likely giving another interview or just passed through it, which would not be a good answer .. or the last phase of my life, when i thought that i will be done by this experiment before the end of Dec 2011, & here i am in Jan 2020, still working on it.
from human behavior perspective, whatever a person volunteers for any information about him/her is the most truthful / factual .. and the rest is up to me to gather from my senses – either in terms of connecting the dots or finding disconnects in the information provided .. so, i would rather observe people’s actions / behavior without intruding in their life .. actions speak louder than words … & quantum particles & humans behave similarly, simple because we are all made of them ..!
& now, you may think, IF most people don’t share a truth, isn’t this applicable for this guy as well (aka TheVIP) … well, this point is covered by the format of this website; i.e. the answers to most you questions (i would say 99%, & remaining 1% i don’t plan to answer anyways) are already written here, even before the question arrived in your mind; therefore, i direct people to my website, rather than answering directly … the answers are written before you thought about them, are same for all the readers; as, i don’t even have an option to change based on the reader’s profile … think about it.
words have no meaning …
“it’s only your own mind that gives a meaning to them” ~ Sadhguru
follow this conversation :
A: “how are you?”
B: “I am fine.”
do you really think B is fine or this person is simply responding to a casual conversation ..? so, it is up to A, on how to take that reply and arrive at a conclusion … do you think, A can use B’s word in an argument, should it happen, that you said, “you are fine”, so you must be “fine” .. & you can see where would this go from here.
the point is most people take conversations casually & that’s why in this world, we developed the concept of agreement, so we have everything in “writing.”
& then there are courts which enforce those agreements and you can argue to death .. & the lawyers can make ton of money to explain the meaning of word “is” is … you know what i am talking about (hint: circa 1998) ..!
it is important to understand the expectations of the other person or human behavior first, & then make a decision whether you simply wanna have a conversation or put it in writing to make an agreement .. but remember, any agreement can be challenged in court .. so the question is “what are we agreeing?”
“to be honest with you …”
the moment i hear these words from someone, i feel like stopping them right there and ask … would you please confirm that whatever you have told me so far was not honesty ..! … people use the word honesty so lightly & casually … sometimes, i feel like telling them, say what you wanna say, and let me figure out whether you are honest or not.
by using this phrase, it feels like the person is doing a favor to you by being honest, and then i wonder about the times when this person didn’t use this phrase.
separately, if you would like to understand the definition of honesty & levels of honesty, i recommend watching ‘Quantico serial on ABC’ and i bet you will stop looking for honest people as being part of human race we all have deep dark secrets and many times, even an individual doesn’t know about himself or herself .. so the question of honesty doesn’t even arise.
a humanly way of cheating …!
of course, anyone can talk about how someone else cheated on them, but have you thought about how you have been cheating yourself ..?
i call it, “self-feeding cause & effect”; i.e. how humans feed their own mind to justify their own acts ..!
here the examples are from smoking & eating, but they are widely available in all walks of our lives …
for example, it’s okay when one says, “i know smoking is bad, but i take my chances of catching cancer & now corona, but i will die one day anyway, so let me enjoy, while i can!”
but here is what i find it funny, when someone says, “i know smoking in bad but i can’t give up … because, it helps me relieve stress, or it helps me with my morning routine, or i can’t even function without” & some of it may be true at the moment, but the question is, if you think its bad, what are you doing about it? otherwise, you are feeding BS to yourself ..!
i even heard one girl saying that she took upon smoking because she had a crush on someone who smoked, and i asked her, where is he now …? well you can guess, but smoking will stay with her for rest of her life ..!
similarly, there are self-feeding stories about eating …
its okay to say “Hey, i enjoy eating & i am not in shape, but who cares; i need to eat, spicy Indian food because that’s my source of energy” look who is talking now ..!
but isn’t obesity an input/output problem ..?
how can you be obese, if you cut down you portion size to half & then half, again … or skip a meal on regular basis, as suggested in Hinduism as fasting ?
but how can changing your food or hiring a nutritionist or seeing a psychologist is a solution ..? e.g. if you are seeing a psychologist, you at least agree that its a psychological problem; i.e. in your head, which is controlled by whom ? .. or your other options is to leverage some external chemicals.
on top of that, there are companies, like Weight Watchers, which can give you formulae on what to eat, which is nothing but a linear mapping to number of calories in the food, but since you will be paying for the service, hopefully you will remember making those calculations before ordering your food ..!
& the ultimate joke is, if i can’t solve my obesity problem, let’s go for group therapy; so, let’s bring all the cheaters together and solve the problem by talking about it, and proving moral support to each other .. really ..!
is fear [of something happening in future] consuming a piece of your mind ..?
according to Mr. Kahneman, “we think much less than we think ..” see About/Thought & Mission page for his quote … i am looking at the same statement from a different perspective … in modern day living, how much piece of our mind we give up to unproductive activities ..?
to give you an interesting example using my windows PC .. at times, its CPU runs at 30%, even when it’s not doing anything for me; i.e. running some crap like McFee (comes pre-loaded with O/S) & windows defender services to protect my machine .. so, 30% of CPU capacity is wasted to protect the machine from the vulnerabilities of the operating system ..!
as humans, we waste our precious CPU cycles because we live in such a fearful society that our mind is continuously spending its cycles to watch for everything going around us; e.g. how much time do you spend at work just thinking about what you should or shouldn’t say or act that will get you fired … can you speak freely or your mind is always thinking about everything else that’s happening above, below and sideways to you.
similarly, when you are speaking to your spouse, are you using full capacity of your mind or are you wasting good number of cycles just to make sure what to say or not say so that he / she doesn’t run away.
people spend lot of time think about what’s not happening in their life, rather than what is?
for example, if one wants to be rich than he will be thinking and worrying about why bank balance is not rising, rather than what he has in present and enjoy it, because becoming rich doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be able to enjoy your wealth … you also need time and presence of mind to enjoy your wealth; if one gets divorced, are you thinking about why this happened to you or about all those things that you can do now which you were not, when you were married .. similarly in investing, when one buys a stock, you are thinking and worrying about why it’s not going up, & if it is not, should you be thinking about why it’s going down ?
“i like to help others …”
if i do ask a question to someone, here is a question that comes in early stage of a conversation: “what do you want to do in life (or what’s your mission in life) ?” & a common answer that i get [especially by those who haven’t figured this out] is “i want to help other people” … people think that they have figured out the mission of their life in this answer, however, it is a totally meaningless answer, and here is why?
first of all, unless you work in manufacturing which is rare now-a-days, most of us work in service economy … being in service economy, you job description is “to help other people” … hence the phrase, “May i help you ..?” from Walmart, which is followed by everyone else now-a-days … helping others is not your mission, rather it’s your job, which pays you ..!
the few cases this phrase may be applicable is when you have more money than you can spend in your lifetime and wanna to do something about it before your time is up .. like Gates and Buffett .. but again those are exceptions.
“i didn’t know i had a choice …”
when you hear these words from someone, run as fast as you can from this person .. this scenario means, not only the person knew that he / she is hurting you, but also took the action consciously … because you always have choices; it is simply you chose to put one’s interests over others – either to take it upon yourself or give up / hurt the other person … & in this case the person very well knew the action as well as its consequences … watch last episode of Blacklist (season 4) to understand the situation live.
“i didn’t know i had a choice …”
when you hear these words from someone, run as fast as you can from this person .. this scenario means, not only the person knew that he / she is hurting you, but also took the action consciously … because you always have choices; it is simply you chose to put one’s interests over others – either to take it upon yourself or give up / hurt the other person … & in this case the person very well knew the action as well as its consequences … watch last episode of Blacklist (season 4) to understand the situation live.
it’s human nature to ask for more .. aka negotiations
but once you reach the limit of the other party & they stop caring about the process … & IF you don’t known when to fold .. it goes down hill from here, so the offer becomes worse over time, which means you will never be happy with the outcome, as its less than what you could have had;
so, is it worth negotiating ..?
let me talk about the religious intolerance in India, as an example …
things are starting to look better in India since BJP/Modi govt. came in power in 2014 with that, folks who had free ride in last 70 years (since independence) feel the pressure, to which some of the intellectuals (bloody lefties) and the bollywood types (rich but uneducated) call a change in religious intolerance … but what these stupid idiots don’t realize is that India as a country & Hinduism as a religion are the most tolerant in nature … we are taught to give 100% to our guests, we let the tyrants live in our home … but its human nature to always ask for more … and now that we ask them to stop doing stupid things like, not using loudspeakers starting early in the morning, to public land encroachment needs to be curtailed … the lefties are right that religious intolerance is coming down, as a patience of those who follow Hinduism is waning .. supported by Congress govt., the lefties could do whatever the hell they wanted in the name of secularism and tolerance, but all this is starting to change to run the country per constitution.
can you differentiate between cause & effect ..?
watched the documentary on Netflix about drug consumption, which clearly explains how people can get confused between the two .. as you may know, amphetamine is a drug that is a nervous system stimulant that is used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, narcolepsy, and obesity .. as some doctors experimented with the drug, and gave it to some out of control / focus kids, the drug seem to have helped them, so they concluded that the kids have ADHD … & the kids as well as parents were happy that the problem (which didn’t exist in first place!) is seem to be resolved, & of course, doctors were happy as they were making money, but what actually happened is that they turned their kids into drug addicts.
conclusion: lot of things may seem to solve a problem, but you need to make sure if the problem even exist in first place ..!
wonder why people buy life insurance / warranty ..?
all the worries that you have in your life – your health, family, job, financial situation – are there because you are live .. & the moment you are dead, it becomes someone else’ problem .. e.g. if you have a loan on your house, it becomes your bank’s problem … if you have an unfinished project where the deadlines are non-sense, it becomes your boss’ problem .. your family & friends – they all will figure out how to survive without you .. maybe they will end up choosing a path of their own, which is better for them.
& you, OTOH, will have good time being dead, possibly in heaven, and it gives you a chance to start all over again – called rebirth in Hinduism & known as “flattening” in trading … so, why worry about it .? … moral of the story: do the best you can for yourself and people around you, while you live, and then enjoy more when you are dead because then there is nothing to worry about .. & you don’t need life insurance for that ..!
are you making your own choices ?
or is it the marketing department of some large company doing for you ..?
isn’t it ironic that people engage or get married around Valentine day; we eat lots of candies on Halloween; have big meals around Thanksgiving, purchase lot of gifts/crap around Xmas and then signup for a gym in January; and forget about the gym by the time it’s Valentine.
similarly, most people re-balance their portfolio in first week in January – all at the same time … Dec 31 is only applicable for accountants, first week of January has no significance for investors as the year end is not useful until earnings are announced, which typically happen between 3-6 weeks after the end of quarter.
people follow the timeline/calendar set by big companies, which means their behavior is driven by those, and as a result, you follow those patterns, which, you can imagine, doesn’t help you .
think about it.
people don’t change behaviors easily, but make choices over time, which are situational …
watch the serial Nashville, which captures human behavior beautifully, especially the women behavior … first, our behavior is cumulative; i.e. it begins with millions of years of evolution to last few generations to last generation to you since birth, your childhood, background, education, neighborhood etc etc … which tuns into a product who you are today and a few years during your adulthood doesn’t change much, although some are able to change their decision making power quickly, either by education (book-smart) or experience (street smart) .. bottom-line, a human behavior is really hard to change and it doesn’t change much in a lifetime .. but we do make different choices based on past experiences and new learning, but once we make a choice, we return to old behaviors …!
this is a perfect segue to move into partnerships …