Common Sense 4 Common People

the BOOK OF est

This is a superb book that I picked up for a second reading. I own a used copy but with some effort you might find it somewhere:

The Book of est on wikipedia

The Book of est on Amazon

Here is a small excerpt, which as soon as I read some minutes ago, just knew I had to post it. Apologies for the use of offensive language (to those that requiring such apologies):

Let me remind you before I go on that I don't want you to believe a word I say over this weekend, just listen. Because the reason your lives don't work is that you're all living mechanically in your belief systems instead of freshly in the world of actual experience. You don't look at reality and then construct conclusions, no. No, you did that decades ago. You asswholes are roboting through life with your conclusions, and with your conclusions developed decades ago you are constructing reality! No wonder you've lost all aliveness. No wonder your lives don't work.

Have fun!

Dimitris Staikos

Psychology is a science, NOT just Common Sense

This is an excerpt from an excellent book that I am currently reading:

It's no surprise that people who are faced with choices about how to influence others will often base their decisions on thinking that's grounded in fields such as economics, political science and public policy. What's puzzling, however, is how frequently decision-makers fail to consider established theories and practices in psychology.

One explanation is that, in contrast to how they regard the fields of economics, political science and public policy, which requires learning from outsiders to achieve even a minimal level of competence, people believe they already possess an intuitive understanding of psychological principles simply by virtue of living life and interacting with others. This overconfidence leads people to miss golden opportunities.

It is really sad to see otherwise smart people feverously deny any chance to improve their soft-skills, to attend seminars about human behaviour, influence, negotiations, etc. Their thinking appears to be something of the sort "Hey dude, can't you see what great a manager I am? How did I get here? Because I am smart and because I am good, really good. I need no silly seminars to tell me how to do my job!".

As the book says, they believe they already have ALL the skills they need, plus they believe (in their hearts) that they do a damned good job, almost perfect. They think that psychology is common sense; if you are smart enough you can figure it out by yourself. But it's not that way. Psychology is a real science and you definitely cannot figure it out. Just read a couple of good texts and after your jaw drops to the floor for a couple dozens of times you will know that you could never have figured it out.

Needless to say, the competition will sooner or later do their part of the studying and inevitably they will outrun these managers and their companies. It's as certain as death and taxes.

Have fun,

Dimitris Staikos

Lies

This is the final excerpt from the no-longer-to-be-held-secret book that I've been reading the past days.

Every society is based on lies. Our society of today is based upon on conflicting lies. The man who lived in a simple, stable, single-lie society absorbed the single-lie system into a unified self and spouted it for the rest of his life, uncontradicted by his friends and neighbors, and unaware that ninety-eight percent of his beliefs were illusions, his values artificial and arbitrary and most of his desires comically ill-aimed.

The man in our multi-lie society absorbs a chaos of conflicting lies and is reminded daily by his friends and neighbors that his beliefs are not universally held, that his values are personal and arbitrary and his desires often ill-aimed. We must realize that to ask this man to be honest and true to himself, when his contradictory selves have multiple contradictory answers to most questions, is a safe and economical method of driving him insane.

When I first read this paragraph I was totally amazed. Just a couple of lines and suddenly so many pieces come together. Society is based on lies. Democracy? Or rather hereditary democracy where members of rich and powerful families get elected again and again with the blessing of the hallucinating morons? Justice? Well if you have money you don't only get private banking, you also get private justice. Moral Values and Common Good? Ha, if and when they do not affect shareholder value in a negative way.

I have come to agree with what Luke Rhinehart says above in his infamous-to-some book The Dice Man. Today's society is a big "WTF is going on man???" Most people try desperately to make sense out of this massively self-contradicting mess and only get frustrated, disappointed and even depressed or insane. They need something to believe in, but what could that be?

On the other hand are some that fully understand that nowadays money and power are the only ideals, that moral values do not exist but are a necessary evil for dealing with the press and presenting a decent face. They are the "clever" ones...

The Audience is Listening

This is another paragraph from the yet unnamed book I am currently reading:

"A man is defined by his audience: by the people, institutions, authors, magazines, movie heroes, philosophers by whom he pictures himself being cheered and booed. Major psychological disturbances, 'identity crises', are caused when an individual begins to change the audience for whom he plays: from parents to peers; from peers to the works of Albert Camus; from the Bible to Hugh Hefner. The change from I-am-he-who-is-a-good-son to I-am-he-who-is-a-good-buddy constitutes a revolution".

Sit back, relax and consider which characters constitute your audience. Did you pick them yourself? Any uninvited ones or relics of the past that you'd rather do without? It's quite unsettling to think of your character and yourself from such a point of view, but it can offer some new and helpful insights.

Enjoy!

On the issue of self

I am re-reading those days one of the most influential and controversial books I have ever read. I won't give away the title until I am finished with it. I'll just be giving you some excerpts and my related thoughts. So here we go:

"... I had to wonder what happened to every human in the two decades between seven and twenty-seven to turn a kitten into a cow. Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety filled and diffused?"

"What if the development of a sense of self is normal and natural, but is neither inevitable nor desirable? What if the sense of being someone represents an evolutionary error as disastrous to the further development of a more complex creature as was the shell for snails or turtles?"

"Adults rule and they reward patterns. Patterns it is. And eventual misery".

This book made me realize how much of a prison a stable self is. Everybody tells you, yells at you, to be yourself, meaning one well defined automaton, with well defined consumer habits, another personality that can be described with statistics. If you are flexible and swifting you are described as childish, rebellious and\or unstable, you are scorned and reprimanded.

It is society that has come to force us into a single monolithic self. It didn't happen overnight, and it didn't happen in the last 100 years. This is a remnant of the past, and society has evolved to the point where the single self is troublesome. It leads to misery and neurosis. More on that to come...