Category Archives: Life

Why You Should Always Do What You’re Afraid To Do

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Ralph Waldo Emerson said: ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’ And this rule seems a reasonably good guide for self-improvement. Because it turns out that people are often afraid to do the things they are least familiar with. Whether is approaching a girl in a club, giving a speech to 50 people, or setting up a business: things make us feel anxious because we have little experience doing it. In such cases the anxiety often pushes you away from doing the thing, hence still leaving you clueless about what you will experience, or even further increasing your anxiety.

But there is something odd here: because the things that you are least familiar with provide you with the biggest opportunities to learn. After all: if you are not familiar with something, it means that you have little knowledge of it. It means that you are still at the start of the learning curve; that the ‘marginal utility per unit of experience’ is very high. Therefore, being afraid of something might be a damn good indicator that there is a lot of potential for you to learn about the thing. Hence it might be wise to always do what you are afraid to do.

This reasoning seems cogent, doesn’t it? But there is one problem with Emerson’s rule…it is not always true. There are cases in which fear should actually push you away from doing something – not pull you into doing something. Think about the fear of jumping of a building, or the fear of approaching a tiger. Given that you want to improve yourself, it seems unwise to jump of a building, or to be ripped to pieces by an angry tiger.

So the best we can do is to say that the rule is a heuristic: a guide in life, that points you – in most cases – to the areas in life where you can learn a lot. But how do you know in what cases you should act upon the rule, and in what cases you should realize that doing so might actually put you in danger? I think we have to distinguish between two kinds of fear here: socially conditioned fears and innate fears. The first are things such as being afraid to start a business or to make a move on a girl*: we have been told, or we have experienced at first hand, that such endeavours might cause emotional pain – even though they are not inherently dangerous. Innate fears, on the other hand, are things such as being afraid of tigers, which seems like a reasonable fear. Tigers are dangerous; despite your experiences with one. In other words: it seems that innate fears try to protect us from real threats, while socially conditioned fears don’t always do so.

Taking this into account, ‘Always do what you are afraid of’ is likely to make you learn a lot.

But what do you think?

*it might be true that socially conditioned fears are grounded in biology, hence being innate. If we take evolutionary psychology seriously, for example, it might be true that the fear to approach women is in fact innate. Hence there seems to be a continuum from innate to socially conditioned fears; not a categorical difference.

What Is the Value of a Human Life?

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People are getting older and older and demand better and better (medical) care. Also, advancements in technology and medical knowledge allow what once seemed to be incurable illnesses to be cured – or at least treated. These trends result in an ever increasing rise in the medical expenditures of countries. This begs the question: how far should we go in saving a patient’s life? What is the value of a human life? Should we be prepared to save someone at all costs? Or should we think about the financial consequences of our decisions? And if so, what is the (financial) limit?

There are several ways in which this question can be answered. One response would be that we should go as far as possible in trying to save a person’s life. That is, as far as possible given the boundaries set by our medical and technological knowledge. And although this might cost us (as a society) a lot of money, the money spent on saving a person’s life is nothing compared to the value gained by prolonging their stay on our planet; the emotional gain experienced by the person – and not to forget his family – is of an extraordinary value: a value that can impossibly be expressed in terms of money. Therefore any means available should be employed in order to let people experience (an extension of) life.

However, given that the value of a human life would be ‘impossible to express in terms of money’, why then should we come to the conclusion that – because of that – we should be prepared to save a person’s life at all costs? Wouldn’t that be a rather arbitrary decision? After all, given that (human) life is of a such value that it is inexpressible in terms of money, why then even bother to make the transition to talk about costs? If a human life would truly be invaluable, it would be just as nonsensical to talk about trying to save a person’s life at all cost as it would be to say that we shouldn’t be prepared to pay any money in order to do so, right? The value of life is after all of an entirely different dimension; irreducible to monetary terms in any sense – no matter whether this value is in millions or pennies.

Well, that seems a little radical, doesn’t it? Another option would be to say that we should go as far as could be considered economically reasonable. In welfare countries where civilians have to pay relatively high taxes, that for a huge part are gobbled by the nation’s medical expenses, it seems fair to not only think in the interests of the patient and his family but to also consider the economic prospects of the relevant patient. After all: would it be reasonable for society to pay a huge sum of money to save someone’s life, while the person being saved might be unable to ‘repay’ (in terms of making an economic contribution to society) the medical expenses in any sense? From a purely utilitarian viewpoint, this seems to be an unwise (and even a wrong) decision. Surely, it might be ‘fair’ to save the person’s life, in the sense that the person probably has paid taxes all his life (taxes that were used for paying the medical treatments of others). But that doesn’t change the fact that, at this point in time, it would be unprofitable/utility-degrading to pay for the patient’s treatment.

A solution to cover this seemingly unfair attitude – although it might sound counter-intuitive – would be to make people decide for themselves how much they are prepared to pay for saving a patient’s life. Subsequently, it would be this amount of money that the person would contribute (in the form of taxes) for covering the country’s medical expenses. However, the other side of this plan would be that, whenever the tax payer himself would have to be treated in hospital, this person’s treatment costs will be compared with the amount of money he contributed to society for covering its medical expenditures/saving a person’s life. Based upon this comparison will be decided whether or not the person should be treated. When the contribution-fee is decided upfront – before the person ‘officially’ enters society (let’s say at the age of 18) – no conflict of interests can occur, and everyone’s wishes are taken into account.

A totally different option would be to shove the full responsibility for covering one’s medical expenditures down to someone’s own wallet: to make people pay for their own medical costs. After all: who would mind a person spending thousands of dollars coming from his own pocket? No-one I suppose. Unless, of course, this person is you. Because what to do if you don’t have the money required to cover your medical expenses? It doesn’t seem fair to let you die just because you haven’t earned as much money as the richest ten percent of the population, right? However, even if you would be the person becoming sick and having to pay for your own medical costs, you might still consider this libertarian attitude towards ‘paying my own costs’ to be the true righteous manner to live your life.

It is in no way an easy question. It is about much more than medical costs/finance: it’s about values/ethics, which implies that there is likely to be no definite answer to this question.

But what do you think?

What Are You Besides Your Body?

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Let’s ask the question: What am I? Not ‘Who am I?,’ because asking ‘Who am I?’ would already presume the presence of some entity whose nature is being questioned. Just what am I. Am I my body? No, that’s my body…again the presence of an entity is presumed to which my body would be assigned. Because what is this ‘my’ in my body? What makes my body ‘my’ body and your body ‘your’ body? What makes ‘you’ you and ‘me’ me? Are there even such things as ‘you’ and ‘me’? Or all we all part of a bigger whole; a continuum of nature in which no discrete entities exist?

When I’m referring to ‘me’, I’m not referring to what I have. And that includes my body. I think I am referring to my consciousness. But then again: what is this ‘my’ in ‘my consciousness’? What makes my consciousness mine and your consciousness yours? Assuming that you have a consciousness of course…I don’t know. There has to be something ‘my’ consciousness would have to be ascribed to in order to make it different from ‘your’ consciousness. My body maybe…and now we’re back at where we started.

It appears like we are just too stupid to come to understand what the ‘I’ in ‘What am I?’ is. Our tiny little brains just cannot handle the question. But, instead of a big read ‘ERROR’ appearing in the middle of our minds, the mind desperately tries to come up with an answer. Anything. It doesn’t manner how unverifiable or implausible it is. Desperately it tries to find something that makes ‘me’ me and ‘you’ you. But over and over again it returns home disappointed…not even knowing where or what this home is.

How does the ‘who’ in ‘who am I?’ differ from the ‘what’ in ‘what am I?’ Do they even differ? Because if it not, determinism might be unavoidable. If there is nothing in us that contributes at least a little value to the collective of cells making up our bodies, then we have to conclude that we are the collective of cells making up our bodies. But then free will would be nothing more than an illusion. Or it must be something that is formed in some inconceivable manner by the gigantically complex network of cells we call our bodies.

But let me ask you: what if free will would merely be an illusion? Would you care? Would your life become any different from what it is now? You could still do anything you want to do. The only difference is that what you ‘want’ to do would be programmed into your genetic structure. ‘You’ would merely be a witness overlooking the execution of this protocol.

Do you believe in consciousness? And if so, what do you believe it is? And would you mind if your consciousness would be like a fart; nothing but a by-product of your body?

Interest Cannot be Created: It Can Only be Discovered

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‘Are you interested in the stock market?’ I asked a colleague of mine, who works as a economics editor at a newspaper, and hence has to write about stocks, markets etc. ‘I have to’, he said, ‘It is part of my job’. ‘You cannot have to be interested in something. You either are or you are not interested. Period.’ I replied. ‘You can get used to something, but you cannot become interested in something.’ He smiled at me, and walked away; I think he agreed.

Intrinsic
There is a huge difference between interests and skills: while you can develop the latter, you cannot develop the former. Interests are an intrinsic part of your nature; they define, to a large extent, who you are. If you are, for whatever reason, interested in history, you will tend to become ‘better at’ history. Maybe even choose a history related job. But you are good at it, because you find it interesting. It is not because you are good at something, that you are interested in it. That is impossible.

And that brings us to the difficulty of interests. If someone tells you: ‘Just do whatever you find interesting. Find a job you like, and then do just do it,’ it seems like reasonable advice. And if you know what you’re interested in, it might even be helpful advice. But the problem starts if you don’t know what you are interested in. Because, interests being an intrinsic part of your identity, you cannot create an interest in something. You can become better, or worse, at doing something; you can even get used to it. But you cannot become interested in it.

Do something
But what then should you do if don’t know what you are interested in? If it all starts with knowing what you find interesting, and then just doing that, then it seems like you are on a dead end if you don’t know what you find interesting.

Well, if you don’t know your interests, and given that you cannot create interest in something, you have to choose a different approach: you have to find your interests. And the only way to find them, is by engaging in all sorts of activities, so that by doing these activities you can find out what you do (and what you don’t) find interesting. You cannot sit down on a chair, thinking deeply (‘soul-searching’) about what you like to do. This only works if you already know what you find interesting; not if you still have to discover that.

Hence, to those of you that are sitting at home, not knowing what to do with their lives; not knowing what kind of job to pursue, I would say the following: get out there, and find what you are interested in. For interest cannot be created. It can only be discovered.

But what do you think?

Read The Life of a Twenty-Something to see why so many people in their twenties don’t know what to do with their lives

‘Moral Logic’: a Guide for Political Decision Making?

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Modal logic is – as far as I am concerned – all about what might possibly be the case (alethic logic) or about what we know (epistemic logic), but not about what we should or should not do. That is: ethics seems not to be grounded in modal logic – or any logic for that matter. And that’s a pity, for I believe that logic can play a valuable role in moral decision making, especially in politics. Let me illustrate this with an example:

Let’s say that a politician proposes a policy A (‘Taxes are increased’). Let’s suppose that it is common knowledge that A leads to B (‘A –> B’), with B being ‘The disposable income of the poor is decreased’. Now, let’s say the politician doesn’t want B, (we write ‘–B’). Then, you could reasonably say that, by letting ‘–’ follow the rules of negation, and by applying modus tollens, we get –A. That is: the politician does not want A.

This last step requires clarification. Suppose that we know that by increasing taxes (A), the disposable income of the poor will be decreased (B). Then knowing that the politician doesn’t want the income of the poor to be decreased, the politician should not increase taxes. Then, assuming that no-one wants to do something he should not do (we are dealing with very rational agents here), it follows that the politician does not want A (‘–A’).

This ‘logic’ is consequentialist in nature. That is, you decide whether to perform a certain action (A), by looking at its consequences (B). In case you want B, you are good. In case you don’t want B (–B), then – by modus tollens – it follows that you should not do A. Hence you don’t want A, giving –A. This logic is of of course very strict; it follows absolute rules, axioms or principles. Hence it might be suited best to model a moral system that is equally strict. Think about Kantian ethics. On the other hand, a system like utilitarian ethics might be better modelled by a different mathematical model.

Workings
Let’s dive a little deeper into the working of this moral logic. One way this logic might work is as follows.

(1) You start with a set of axioms; propositions you absolutely want, or absolutely don’t want to be the case:

A
–B
C

(2) Next you look at the actions available, and the consequences these actions entail:

D –> A
D –> B
E –> C.

(3) Then you choose an action (in this case either D or E), which does not have any consequences you absolutely don’t want. In this case you should not choose D, for D –> B, and you have –B, hence –D. That is, according to the rules laid down, we don’t want D; hence the only option that remains is E.

Extended
Of course, this ‘logic’ does not obey all the regular rules of logic; for instance, it does not obey the rule of modal logic that the two modal operators can be expressed in terms of each other – we don’t even have two modal operators. But still, by applying the very simple rules laid down above, applying this logic can be helpful. I find this logic particularly valuable in analysing arguments used in political decision making, for politics is a prime example of the interplay between actions (the antecedent of our material conditional) and normative consequences (the consequences).

The above logic can be extended to take into account degrees of preferences. You could make a hierarchy of consequences, with consequences higher at the hierarchy being morally superior to those below, so that – in case you have more than one action to choose from – you should choose the one having the consequences highest in the hierarchy. This would also suit Artificial Intelligence very well.

What do you guys think of the moral logic?

Feelings of Shame: Biologically or Socially determined?

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We’ve all had it. That feeling of being deeply disappointed in yourself. That feeling of knowing that you’ve done something wrong, even though you might not know exactly what. I’m talking of course about the feeling of shame. But what is shame? Is it nothing but a chemical response our bodies tend to have towards “embarrassing” situations? And if so, how do our bodies decide between embarrassing and non-embarrassing situations? And what role does our social context play in determining our feelings of shame?

Like any feeling, shame has developed to increase our procreation chances. If we wouldn’t feel any shame, we might have never become the social creatures that we are. Imagine that you would be a caveman hunting with your fellow cavemen. While you’re sitting in the bush, you decide to attack a very angry looking bear, even though the leader of the group explicitly told you not to do so. If you wouldn’t feel bad – feel “ashamed” – about this situation afterwards, there would be nothing to prevent you from doing this “stupid” behavior again. In other words: there would be nothing withholding you from endangering you and your group members again. Sooner or later you would end up being banned from the tribe or dead.

This example might be a oversimplification of the actual workings of our “shame mechanism”, but it should do the job in explaining how our tendency to feel shame has come about. Millions and millions of years of evolution have weeded out those not feeling shame; ending up with a population in which (almost) anyone has the ability to feel shame.

However, while our ability to feel shame is biologically determined, the content of our feelings of shame – that is where we feel ashamed about – is for the biggest part socially determined. And the reason for that is simple: if the content of our feelings of shame wouldn’t be socially determined, they would always lack “environmental relevancy”. What do I mean that? Well – to return to the example of the cavemen – if we would be biologically “tuned” to experience shame whenever we let our fellow hunters down while chasing an angry looking bear, this would imply the requirement a great deal of likewise shame mechanisms to prevent us from doing anything shameful/harmful in life. And because our society is ever-changing – at least a faster pace than our biological makeup – we would always remain tuned to a historical environment; an environment not relevant in sifting the fit from the weak in today’s world. That’s why the ability to feel shame is biologically determined, but the instances that trigger our feelings of shame come about (mainly) through our social context.

There are, however, some aspects of life more important in determining one’s procreation chances than others. The most prominent of course being our sexual capabilities. This could explain why sex seems to take such a prominent position in the whole realm of of areas we could be ashamed about; sex related events simply tend to have a more profound physical effect on us than non-sex related events. This might be why people have the tendency to feel ashamed about their weight, looks, sexual experience, sexual orientation etc.: all of these have – or have had in the past – a significant effect in determining one’s procreation chances.

These are my thoughts on the issue; what are yours?

Why People with OCD Give Into their ‘Irrationalities’

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I have got OCD. That is to say: I have intrusive thoughts flying into my head, which create anxiety, sparking in me the urge to perform certain actions (‘compulsions’), that relieve me of the anxiety (find delta 8 near me to tackle this situation easily). What kind of thoughts am I talking about? Well, it’s hard to explain. Fore example: whenever I touch something, let’s say a book, I have to have a certain ‘image’ in mind – usually of someone I look up to. Also, I have to do the ‘touch-don’t touch’ ritual a certain number of times. Not any number of course! No, only the numbers that ‘are right’. This is not an exact science, but the numbers are always even (unless it’s one, which is always good!), but not any even number will do…Makes sense right?

Is this weird? Absolutely. Would I die if I wouldn’t give into the urges? Absolutely not. Why then do I do it? Am I stupid? Or to put it differently: is it irrational to give into these urges?

Book
My first response would be: ‘Yes, this is very irrational.’ I perform certain actions which don’t add any value to my life. It is not like baking a cake, washing your car or taking a shower: activities that actually provide you with some sort of tangible effect. But it is even worse that: because besides the fact that my compulsions don’t add any value, they actually take (an awful long) time and energy. So actually it is very stupid to give into the urges. So why then do I do it? Am I stupid?

Well, it is actually very easy to explain…to those who smoke. If you are a smoker, you, after let’s say two hours of not-smoking, feel the urge to smoke. If you don’t give into that urge, you will get nervous, irritable, you cannot focus, and more. You know that smoking doesn’t add any value to your life; hell no, it’s even bad for you! Yet, even though you know this, you give into your urge to smoke, and take a cigarette. Why? Because in the short term, it’s the best thing to do. One more cigarette won’t harm you that much, while not taking the cigarette does harm you significantly – you get nervous, irritable, and you cannot put your mind to those issues you want to focus on, etc.

It’s the same with OCD. Let’s say I touch a book and put it away. Then I feel the urge to do this with a ‘good image’ in mind. Not giving into the urge makes me feel like there is a lock on my brain, like my cognitive capacities are severely limited, like I cannot think clearly (sounds familiar smokers?). This feeling is so unpleasant, that – even though I know it won’t add any value in the long term (if will even detract value due to the time and energy it takes) – I do the compulsion to get rid of the unpleasantness.

Furthermore, just like smoking, OCD is addictive. You either don’t do it, or you do it big time. For if you give into the urge, the urge will become stronger, and it will be harder to resist. But in case you don’t give in, the urge will get less and less. But in order not to give in, you have to resist the unpleasantness of the moment, and – as I explained above – that always seems the sup-optimal option.

Rational
But back to the question I asked at the start: is it irrational to give into the urges? Especially given that I know it won’t add any value to my  life? I say – and I have been ridiculed for this by my psychiatrist – it is not irrational. Because at each point in time, not giving into the urge leaves me with a bad feeling: an unpleasant feeling, a restriction on my thinking, that I don’t want. This feeling can literally last for hours, or even an entire day. Giving into the urge clears me of this bad feeling. And – even though the activity takes time and effort – that takes much less time and energy than that the negative feeling makes me feel bad. The only problem is that I know that, within now and a couple of seconds after having given into the urge, the next urge will be there, to which I will have to give in again…

Welcome inside of the mind of someone with OCD.

What do you think: is it utterly irrational to give in to the urges? Or would you say that – given the short term relief of the negative feeling – it is actually a rational thing to do?

Depression: Thinking Too Much and Doing Too Little

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Why do dogs never appear to be depressed? Why do they always seem to be happy, no matter what it is they are doing? Well, the answer might be very simple: because they are always doing.

Dogs are always involved in one activity or another. They always got their little heads occupied with all kinds of biologically induced juices – whether they (consciously) know it or not. And it is because they’re always ‘busy’, doing whatever seemingly irrelevant activity it is they’re doing, that they are happy. It’s because they’re always busy, that they feel the effects of that constant stream of dopamine, rewarding them for their evolutionary beneficial action: the act of acting itself.

Not acting frees the mind from the duty to allocate resources to the execution of actions. However, the mind cannot simply do nothing. In fact, doing nothing – as in thinking about nothing – might be one of the hardest things to do for the brain. And that’s what you expect, right? After all, not thinking about anything can hardly be beneficial to our – and therefore our brain’s – survival. While we’ve got our brain, it’s better to use it, than to let it be idle, like an empty fridge waiting to be filled with postponed protein-intakes. That’s why the brain will do anything in order to try to be busy, even if there are no actions it has to be focused at. It is at those moments that the brain ‘thinks’ it is good idea to use this ‘break’ to think about your worries, your goals in life, your purpose and other fundamental questions. And it is at these moments that your mind explores the deepest purposeless of life, and triggers the feelings of depression that haunt us.

So – in case we want to get rid of the seemingly unproductive (and surely depressing) reflections on life – we must keep the mind, and therefore the brain, busy. We have to make sure that there’s no time – or no capacity – for it to become filled with soul-searching thoughts. Because although a little soul-searching might be good, and might point us to what it is that we should do with our lives, too much of it inevitably results in feelings of purposeless and depression. Hence it is only by being busy, by avoiding boredom and by don’t risking to become drowned in the most existential questions of our being, that we can live a  ‘happy’ life. It is only then that we can unleash the dopamine flows triggering those feelings of happiness we’re longing for. Or, to return to the fridge, it’s only by filling the fridge to the maximum, that we feel it is a worthwhile investment.

But what do you think?

Note: this article has been published at Rod Peek’s “Finding Personal Peace“.

Getting Addicted to Cigarettes…on Purpose

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This might be one the stupidest articles you’ve ever read. My apologies for that.

Four months ago, I decided to start smoking. Why? I don’t know. Probably a combination of factors: I was fascinated by the series Californication, in which the main character (Hank Moody) smokes. Although it is sad to admit, it might be that watching him smoke sparked my curiosity about why it is people grab to cigarettes. Also, I have always been wondering whether smoking is primarily a physiological addiction (an addiction of the body) or a psychological one (an addiction of the mind). I could never understand why less than 25 percent of those who want to quit smoking, actually manage to do so. I always thought: if you want to stop, then you can stop. I mean: if you want to stop travelling by car, you can just stop taking the car, right? So given these ‘rational’ considerations, I decided to take up the cigarette, and start my journey of addiction.

Now, four months later, I have decided to stop. My little ‘experiment’ has provided me with the information I was looking for. I experienced what it is that makes you want to light up a cigarette. And, what I can say, it is more of a psychological addiction than a physiological addiction. It is the feeling of allowing yourself a break from what it is that you are doing. Also, the habit of smoking a cigarette every morning during your ‘morning walk’ gives you a clear signal that the day took off; a feeling as if the referee blew his whistle and the match has started.

However, I must admit that there are also physiological factors that make you want to grab a cigarette. In case you drink coffee (which is more likely than that you smoke), you can compare it to that longing for a cup of coffee to give your the energy you need to get through the day. And, as with drinking coffee, the first cigarette/cup of coffee gives the relative biggest ‘boost’; the relative biggest satisfaction in calming down your longing for nicotine/caffeine.

I’m not sure whether I have become truly addicted to cigarettes. I can only tell how I feel, and that’s what I’ve described above. And – since I’ve been drinking (much) coffee for the last couple of years, and I can fairly say that I’m addicted to caffeine – I think my smoking adventure will have likewise effects. Probably, even though I ‘quitted’, I’ll keep (at least for a while) on having that same longing for cigarettes as I have for coffee. I wonder which impulses will be tougher to handle: the psychological or the physiological. I am curious, and a little anxious, to find out.

What do you think?

The Life of a Twenty-something

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Most of the people that are in their early twenties seem to have no clue what profession to choose. They appear to be lost in the vast range of opportunities that they have to choose from. But why is that these ‘twenty-somethings’ feel this way? And how might they solve this issue?

From Stability to Instability back to Stability
Let’s start by taking a general perspective on the life of a twenty-something (being: a person who is in his twenties). The issue of what occupation to choose is by no means the only issue the twenty-something has to deal with. In general the following statement holds: as a twenty-something you are part of a transition-phase in life; a transition from stability, through instability, back to stability.

For the first part of her (I will say ‘her’ instead of ‘him/her’) life, the twenty-something-to-be did not have the freedom to choose whatever she believed was best. Or at least not concerning ‘big’ matters. It were the parents that took the decisions for her. They were the ones deciding what kindergarten, primary school, high school and – in some cases even – university she would attend. Also, within each of these institutions, the space to manoeuvre was limited. There were fixed programmes she had to attend. Resistance would have been futile, since her opinion was considered mostly irrelevant. The twenty-something-to-be was aware of her limited capacity to change the status quo, which made her suppress the need to reflect on the situation.

But it was not only regarding education that this (apparent) lack of control over her life had arisen. Decisions of where to live, what sports or musical instruments to play, and of course financial issues, were mostly if not exclusively handled by her parents. It was only when the twenty-something-to-be began attending university that freedom rose its head. And it is here that the trouble starts. Because even though freedom in itself is not what troubles the twenty-something-to-be, its counterpart – called ‘responsibility’ – is what makes her tremble. It is the responsibility for the consequences of her own actions that leaves her in a state of apathy. Now she has to take the decisions that up till that point in her life were made by everyone but her.

This phase of by times close to existential doubt ends when the twenty-something has gained long-term stability in her life again. Like being child, becoming a member of the working class implies the familiar presence of fixed rules and the limited need for self-reflection. Having made a choice of what occupation to pursue, and the act of actually pursuing this occupation, makes the twenty-something become immersed into a new institutional structure, making her rest in the faith of having found certainty after a very uncertain period in her life.

From Farmer to Professor
Back to the main issue. Many twenty-somethings appear to feel lost in the sense that they totally don’t know what profession to choose after finishing their studies. What more can we say about this feeling of ‘being lost’? The first thing we could notice is that this feeling appears to be a defining characteristic of what it means to be a twenty-something: it is a property that, by default, is present in any twenty-something’s set of basic characteristics. Given that it is a defining characteristic, it seems reasonable to assume that this feeling has been around forever. But this is not the case…

When I asked people in their fifties whether they knew what profession to choose when they were in their early twenties, they mostly replied negatively. However, when I asked the same question to my grandparents, they said the following: ‘Well, we didn’t really have a choice about what kind of job to do.’ My grandfather told to me that he grew up in a farmer’s family, and that from a very early age it was more or less ‘obvious’ that he would become a farmer himself. My grandmother, the eldest girl of thirteen children, was at the age of fourteen forced to quit her studies so that she could assist her mum in managing the ever-growing household. ‘But’, I asked my grandmother, ‘was there no-one in your family who attended university? ‘Yes, one of us did,’ she said, ‘He had the talent to do so.’ My grandmother assured me that this scarcity of university-attending students was very common among families in those days (70 years ago).

So it seems that the feeling of don’t knowing what profession to choose, as experienced by so many twenty-somethings today, is in fact a relatively new phenomenon. That is: until two generations ago this feeling wasn’t widely shared among twenty-somethings. And the reason for this is, as my grandparents explained, quite obvious: people didn’t effectively have a choice about what to do with their lives. I say ‘lives’ instead of ‘professional lives’, since also regarding other matters in life (religion and to a lesser extent marriage) the autonomy of twenty-somethings appeared to be limited. One could say that, in principle, my grandparents still had the option to deviate from what was expected of them. Assuming that they would have had the financial means to do so (which they didn’t), they could in principle indeed have done so. But in practice, given the social norms and values, they were either explicitly or implicitly discouraged from pursuing higher education or choosing a non-farming/housemaid job.

Nowadays the societies we grow up in are organized in a manner that is fundamentally different from the society of (let’s say) 70 years ago. Today, in contrast to two generations ago, the financial resources required for attending university are available to almost anyone who has the capacity and desire to attend university. Scholarships, government-funded studies, cheap loans and financially affluent parents are among the prime factors that have drastically reduced the chance of being unable to fund one’s higher education.

Next to a shift in the financing of studies, a society-wide ‘mental’ shift seems to have taken place. This is easily seen by taking a look at an arbitrary high school: a child who receives a certificate that allows him to pursue higher education is nowadays frowned upon if he decides not to do so. Whereas two generations ago a farmer-son would by default become a farm unless he had very good reasons not to do so, nowadays a farmer-son by default attends university unless he has very good reasons not to do so. This mental shift might be due to changes in our educational system. Today we have a system in which any child goes through a university-preparing teaching scheme, thereby maximizing their chance to attend university.

Note also that the financial- and mental shift might be interdependent: a shift in outlook towards children’s education might cause a change in educational funding, and vice versa.

Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities
But attending university is in itself no reason to become clueless about what kind of job to pursue. So explaining why it is that many more children today attend university than two generations ago does not explain why these people feel lost when reaching their twenties.

Although not a direct cause of ‘apathy’ among many twenty-somethings, one thing is for sure: pursuing higher education provides anyone with the potential to have more choices regarding what job to pursue. By attending university, the twenty-something knows that – without even looking at the labour market – she will be eligible for more occupations than she was before entering her studies. This fact implies that, when the twenty-something finally settles on a job, there will be more occupations (compared to her not having done her studies) she could have chosen but didn’t. It is the possibility that later on she might reflect upon her life and think ‘I could have chosen better’ that could be part of the explanation of the apathy among twenty-somethings. And since this possibility has increased over the last decades, so has the apathy among twenty-somethings.

Another consequence of higher education that isn’t necessary obvious is that over the course of her education the twenty-something’s interests might change; that is, the occupations/sciences the twenty-something found interesting before embarking on her studies, she might not find interesting anymore when she has finished her educational process. For example: she might finish her first year of university wanting to become a business-consultant, only realizing after finishing her second year (which included courses in philosophy) that she is much more passionate about philosophy. It is not the change in what she finds interesting that makes the twenty-something doubt about what kind of profession to pursue, as much as having experienced that whatever it is that she finds interesting can in fact change. And the idea that – as in education – she could choose a job that she likes now but possibly not anymore in the future increases her uncertainty regarding what job the choose.

Education is merely one of the factors making a twenty-something doubt her occupational choice; it is the part that transforms her from ‘the inside out’. Now, let’s take a look at how the outside world (i.e., the world external to the twenty-something’s mind and body) contributes to the doubts held by the 21st century twenty-something. There are a number of reasons due to the outside world because of which twenty-somethings nowadays have such a hard time choosing an occupation. First of all, because of the ever-increasing specialization, there are simply many more occupations she has to choose from than there were two generations ago. Whereas in the past there might not have been (many) alternatives next to becoming a farmer, nowadays there are literally thousands and thousands of occupations she has to (not only can) choose from, and each of these occupations is partitioned into many areas of specialization.

Also, because of globalization and the prominence of the internet, many barriers have been taken away that could have prevented the twenty-something from 20 years ago from doing whatever it was that she wanted to do. In other words: there is no excuse anymore for not starting a business or for not working at a big firm on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing but her own courage to withhold her from pursuing her aspirations; a scary thought. To exemplify this, let’s return to the case of my grandmother. It was clear to her that, after assisting her mum, she would marry a farmer and take care of his household. She might not have liked having few – if any – options about what ‘job’ to pursue, but that was simply the way it was. A positive side effect from her having limited options was that she was ripped of the responsibility to decide what her future would (not) come to look like. It is in this sense that she might have been lucky, for she was saved from the daunting soul-searching journey so many twenty-somethings today are forced to go through.

Options
I have mentioned the word ‘options’ more than once. I dare to say that most people believe that having options is a good thing. Certain philosophers even claim that autonomy (as in having the freedom to decide what one’s life goals are, how to pursue them and whether or not to actually pursue them) is intrinsically valuable. This is a conviction I do not necessarily share.

Like anything, having options becomes a problem if one faces too many options. And I believe this is the issue today’s twenty-somethings are facing. Specialization, the internet et cetera have drastically increased the number of career-options a twenty-something could fulfill; they have increased them to such an extent that she, being a rationally bounded creature (as any human being is), is both unable to overview all of them, let alone compare each option to each other option. Although impossible, the latter is required in order to make an optimal decision. After all, how can the twenty-something ever come to know whether she has made the best choice if she hasn’t considered/compared all options?

Next to there being too many options, there might be options that are incomparable. Why? Because the values they allow one to achieve are not ‘convertible to the same currency’. Think about the choice between becoming a charity worker or an investment banker. The first job might be better in terms of helping those who need help; the second might be better in terms of utilizing one’s intellectual capabilities. But which one of these criteria is most important, and why? And how much more important? These are questions that do not have an obvious (if any) answer.

Back to the claim that having options is not necessarily a good thing. Let’s return to the case of the farmer’s son. Given that the farmer’s son knows that he has no choice but to become a farmer, he is likely to never experience the regret (or the apathy caused by the prospect of regret) that today’s twenty-something faces. Nevertheless, when we analyse the farmer’s son situation, and come to see that his only ‘option’ is to become a farmer, we tend to feel sorry for him. It seems like having only one option is really not having an option at all, making his ‘choice’ to become a farmer look more like an act of coercion than an act of free will, contradicting the autonomy many of us find so valuable. However, due to this same lack of options, the farmer’s son will have no choice but to rest in his faith. He simply cannot do anything to alter his situation: he can only accept or resist his situation. He will accept his situation, because not doing so would decrease his happiness.

For today’s twenty-something it is (almost) impossible to rest in her faith, since, due to the autonomy has but the farmer’s son didn’t, she is faced with a never-ending string of opportunities. This makes it very difficult for her to be satisfied with any particular option. After all, it is very likely that, among all the opportunities out there, there is one that would be preferred to this one, if only she would find – or would have found – it. It is this observation that leaves her in a perpetual state of downgrading the options that are effectively available to her, and thereby her happiness. So even though the twenty-something of today has more autonomy than the farmer’s son of two generations ago, it does not follow that the twenty-something will be happier than the farmer’s son. In other words: more choices don’t necessarily imply more happiness.

Intuition
In the last section we stumbled upon a non-trivial observation. Namely: because of the vastness of opportunities the twenty-something faces and her limited rational capacities to oversee all of them, rationality alone is not sufficient for the twenty-something to choose the ‘best’ option. It is after all impossible to compare all options, hence to know if – and when – she found the best option.

But even though it appears impossible to choose the best option, one thing is for sure: she has to make a decision. Even the decision not to pursue a career is a choice, and should therefore be compared against other options. Since it is impossible to compare all occupations in terms of how well they score on all relevant criteria (loan, chance to develop yourself etc.), the twenty-something has to make use of some sort of ‘selection device’, that pre-selects a subset of the set of all occupations. This is required to allow her to compare each member of this smaller set to each other (based on how well they fare with regard to the relevant criteria). By doing this, she might be able to find a ‘local maximum’: that is, the best occupation given this limited set of occupations. That is all she can hope for given the rationally limited creature that she is.

Assuming that she doesn’t want to randomly pre-select some occupations, the twenty-something has to determine the criteria she finds most relevant for composing this pre-selection. However, this course of action might prove to be unsuccessful, due to the incomparability of criteria (money versus altruism, for example). But this problem might be circumvented.

The answer to picking the criteria must come from something ‘non-rational’ or ‘irrational’ – although I find the latter term misleading, as I will explain later. The non-rational element, on the basis of which the twenty-something might be able to execute her rational machinery, should make clear on a very basic whatever she finds valuable and what not: that is, it should provide her with her most basic wants. These basic wants must come from a place within the twenty-something that holds the instantiating power to all her actions. Let’s call this place the ‘unconscious mind’.

But the unconscious mind’s instantiating power comes at a cost: it is inaccessible to the conscious mind. And since rationality resides within the conscious mind, neither is it accessible to rational deliberation. Now, although the unconscious mind is not accessible, its ‘output’ is. Its output is what we call ‘intuition’, and manifests itself through those inexplicable feelings of something just ‘feeling right’ or ‘feeling wrong’. Although our intuition doesn’t come with any reason for why it is that something feels good or bad, it does something that is at least as important: it provides us with the values we need to choose what we want. 

Intuition in practice
Since intuition is non-rational, it cannot communicate through thoughts: it communicates solely through feelings. But how should the twenty-something go about interpreting these feelings? How does she know what feelings will lead her in the right direction, whatever this might be, and which in the wrong direction? The answer is simple: through trial and error.

There are various reasons why trial and error seems to be the best, if not the only, way for the twenty-something to go about finding the (locally) best occupation. As I explained before, the twenty-something isn’t born with a fixed set of desires; nor with a fixed set of capabilities. Throughout her life, she, for whatever reason, might decide on developing certain skills (e.g., playing piano or mathematics), and, parallel to these developments, she will develop a corresponding level of affinity with practicing these skills.

Next to developing affinity, or ‘preferences’, for practicing certain skills, the act of practicing skills also shows the twenty-something her relative ability in practicing these skills. For example: someone who, after comparing her skills, finds herself to be relatively good in a certain subject area (e.g., mathematics). Then, after having looked at her own capabilities, the twenty-something can decide to look at how her abilities compare to those of others. Based on this observation, she can find out in what field she could potentially make the greatest contribution to society. This is obviously beneficial to society, but just as much to the twenty-something herself, for it is because of the fact that she knows that she does what she is best at – either in terms of her own skills or compared to others – that any negative feelings, that might result from questioning the usage of her capacities, will be minimized.

Furthermore, a nice feature of the twenty-something looking for her relatively best skill is that she is guaranteed to find one. Even those who are negatively minded are at least sure to have a least bad capability.

This observation naturally leads us to the following conclusion: the twenty-something has to engage in all sorts of activities or occupations in order to obtain her preferences for them. Because she lacks any absolute sense of what she likes most, she cannot a priori (that is, before undertaking any action) know what skill, and hence what occupation, suits her best. Given this conceptual background, it might be that her feeling of don’t-knowing-what-to-do is in fact an indicator of the fact that the twenty-something has spent too much time looking for this non-existent absolute preference ranking (‘soul-searching’, as one might call it), and too little time actually developing such preferences.This also leads us to what might be a solution to the twenty-something’s apathy. Namely: by engaging in different activities or subject areas, and developing various skills, the twenty-something creates as well as experiences her preferences towards the respective subject areas or skills. Hence this is the first step away from apathy.

‘But’, the twenty-something might ask, ‘how do I know when to stop the trial-and-error process?’ One can look at this process from an economical point of view: the act of finding a satisfying occupation is nothing but a cost-benefit analysis. Given the inevitable diminishing marginal utility of any effort put into the trial-and-error process, surely a point will be reached at which the twenty-something’s hope of finding the best occupation and her satisfaction with her currently preferred option cancel out. It is at that point that the truly best occupation, in terms of maximizing utility, has been found.

The rationality of being non-rational
We have established that rationality alone is not sufficient for the twenty-something to choose a satisfying occupation. In order to find such an occupation, a ‘non-rational’ component must be introduced: the unconscious mind. But somehow we seem to have difficulties with our choices being (at least partially) determined by a non-rational element.

It might very well be that, in this 21th world we’re living in, rationality is put on a pedestal, and everything non-rational is considered a source of errors, leading us astray from our objectives. We are taught to ignore our intuitions wherever possible; at least when there are ‘rational’ arguments at hand. This might be due to the fact that non-rational factors are beyond our control, thereby making us to some extent a slave to our feelings, thus decreasing our perceived autonomy. But you could ask yourself the question: what is the value of being in control if your ‘controlled’ life doesn’t cohere with your intuitions? What if letting go of control is required in order to explore the full range of opportunities, thereby unlocking the door behind which the realm of unexplored potential resides?

If any, the message of this article is that value cannot be rationally constructed. The ways through which we might achieve what we value can be rationally constructed, but the value itself comes from a domain that is distinct from any rational – or even conscious – part of ourselves. Although this might be difficult to accept for any person taught to think carefully about any choice in life, it is a prerequisite for embarking on the rational process: first you have to accept what you value in order to try and set out a path to reach that which you value.

So one could say that being non-rational, to a certain extent at least, is a prerequisite for being rational. If you don’t allow yourself to act on non-rational impulses, you have no basis on which to cast the rational power, thereby excluding the possibility of doing that which you might value. And isn’t that what we all want to do? To do what we value? If so, we might as well embrace the non-rational, or even stronger: claim that it is rational to be irrational. 

Love
In this last section I want to focus at another potential source of uncertainty for any twenty-something: love. Being in-between the period of life in which love was yet unable to be experienced, and the part in life in which love is deemed to be a relic of the past (or ‘has changed into mutual compassion’), there is this period in which the twenty-something is likely to feel the need to find a future life partner.

But what is love? What characteristics does the twenty-something’s future partner need to have? Are the negative aspects of the relationship she is currently in likely to fade away over time? Or are they are structural component of the chemistry she is (not) having with her current partner? And how to distinguish between the two? If she would end the relationship now, would it leave her forever with a feeling of deep regret for having let this opportunity pass by? Or will it – in retrospect – proof to be a milestone on her way to finding that perfect partner with whom she will spend the rest of her life?

These are questions that any twenty-something is likely to ask herself at a certain point in time. It seems to be the case that most people get married around the age of 30, often being the culmination of a relationship that has been underway for at least a couple of years. A quick calculation shows that, assuming the latter to be true, the twenty-something should meet her life partner not much later than the age of 25. And the more this age approaches, the stronger becomes the twenty-something’s doubt about the status of her current relationship, or, if she doesn’t currently have a partner, the stronger gets the urge to find a potential life partner.

However, the great problem with any romantic relationship is that only in retrospect can be determined whether it has been a good decision to continue the relationship. It might be the case that, at this point in time, the twenty-something and her partner experience struggles that will grow larger and larger as time goes by. But the question of whether these struggles are merely obstacles to overcome on the road to living happily ever after, or that they are symptoms of a profound mismatch between the two, is impossible to answer up front. Here too it seems that only intuition can guide the way, since the experiences that could provide the twenty-something with the relevant information lie in the future, and are thus (for now; the moment we’re always living in) beyond her experience.

The Ego and The Id: Beauty and The Beast

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There it is again: that feeling of purposelessness. What to do about it? I might go on with whatever it is that I’m doing right now, hoping that the feeling will eventually fade away. But I know that that won’t help: it never does. Or I might try to grab some sleep and possibly feel fresh and productive again when I’ll wake up. But I don’t want to waste my precious little time on this planet sleeping just to get through the day. I might go read something, and possibly become inspired by some great stories. But there’s not that much interesting stuff around to read, at least not much that really gets down to the core of where it’s all about. So, what choices do I have left? Not many. So I guess I just have to face the feeling head on. Get my head straight, figure out why it is that I have this feeling, and possibly – as in a therapeutic Freudian manner – calm down my unconscious drives by ‘channeling’ them through my Ego. The drives won’t leave by themselves, so it’s better to find a way to use them in a constructive fashion, than to suppress them and let them linger on in my life. So that’s what I’m trying to do by writing this article.

In a sense my entire blog is a quest to do just that: channel my uncontrollable and inexplicable drives by promising to give them what they want: answers. And even though my Ego knows that there are no answers, or at least no definite ones, my unconscious Id doesn’t know. My Id is retarded in the sense that I can’t think properly, given that it would be able to think at all. The Id is an iPhone you carry around all day and that starts beeping when a new message is received. And although you don’t want to listen to it, because you just want to go on with your life, you just can’t ignore whatever it might have to say. Because, although it might be smart, the Ego can’t set any goals. The Ego is like a calculator, calculating the most efficient route to whatever goal you might have. And this ‘whatever goal you might have’ is determined by the Id, the part of you that bases its decisions on evolutionary induced impulses, pushing you to the refrigerator and to the internet (if you know what I mean).

But what if they could work together? What if they could live happily ever after in harmony, dividing the mental labor as if Adam Smith was there to delegate it? That would be great: Beauty and The Beast working together. Beauty being so consciously aware of its environment, and the Beast just taking her wherever he wants to. Great, let’s do that!

What do you think?

We’ve Got You God!

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Life is a joke. And a damn good one. If you were a God, and you would want to have a laugh, and you could create anything you’d want to, what would you do? What would you create? I know what I would do: I would create a world with little ‘things’ on it, give these things a limited capacity to think, and then just see what happens, just see what they will come up with. Just watch them running around. Each morning and evening I would take a look at them, look at how they deal with the situation I’d put them in. Watching them form alliances, working their asses off, fighting each other and thinking: thinking about why it actually is that they are there.

Think about it: if you would have to create an absolute absurd situation, and you would have unlimited powers to do so, what would you come up with? Probably not a series like Family Guy, right? No, you would strive for the best: for the most absurd thing you could come up with. After all, why would you create Family Guy, if you could create a world, put creatures on it, program these creatures so that they think they are able to discover the world’s secrets but – without most of them realising it – make them incapable of doing so. Maybe you would put a few ‘natural laws’ in order: the law of gravity, electromagnetism etc., or come up with a few ‘elements’ (protons, neutrons, electrons etc.) that make up everything in the creatures’ world, including themselves.

But you would never reveal everything: you would never explain the purpose behind all of it, because you don’t want the creatures to unravel the mystery you have created. There has to be a point at which their limited abilities fail. Them knowing about electrons and other irrelevant entities is okay, but having them know anything of real value would just spoil the fun. They shouldn’t get the feeling that they get it. Just enough for them to believe that they’re the most intelligent things that have ever walked ‘their’ earth. And just enough for them not to kill themselves in total despair.

But what if the creator has underestimated the little creatures? What if the creatures would be able to see through the facade? What if they would come to see that they’re part of one big joke? And what if they would even enjoy the the fact that they are part of a joke? That would spoil the fun for the omnipotent and ever joy-seeking creator, wouldn’t i? So he must make sure that they don’t come to believe that their lives are nothing but a joke: he must create enough misery in their lives to remind them that their pain is real. He must make sure that the minds of the creatures are occupied with impulses to stay alive, impulses telling the creatures what to do with their lives and how to run their societies. Everything to keep their thoughts away from the joke.

But we have got you God. You can quit playing now. Just take some rest and come back to us when you’ve a better one, okay?

But what do you think?

Purpose, Purpose…Where Are You?

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Life without a purpose is like shoes without strings: a burden you want to get rid of. An obstacle on your journey to happiness. A pointless gift you wished you’d never had. The only difference between shoes – either with of without strings – and life is that the former have been made for a purpose. They have been made to do something with. Whether it is supporting little children playing football or walking a pretty lady to the office. We haven’t been created with such a purpose. We are empty. We are – and we have to be – the creator of everything we experience, including the things we value: including our purpose.

What is life without a purpose? What is life devoid of any element that might be of any value? Probably more empty than a vacuum chamber. The only things there would be are our minds yelling at us, “Do something with your life!” And it is our duty – not our privilege – to decide what to do with our lives. And that’s the most difficult task we have. Because how can you know what your purpose is? How can you know what you’re true nature is; what your deepest desires and potentials are; what you’re here for on planet earth? And although you might not know, you have to choose. You’ve got only one life to live. You can of course fill your life with different journeys; the journey towards being a good man and the journey towards being a good writer . But there is always that demon of time looking over your shoulder telling you that all you do has to happen in time. No parallel universes exist. Only this world exists. And remember: time is ticking.

And still we only got one life. One life and so many opportunities; so many decisions to make. Each choice we make is a choice not to do something else. And who knows how that “something else” might have turned out? Maybe you are on the totally wrong track. Maybe you are living a life that could have been much better; you could have been much happier; you could have fulfilled your true nature. If only you would have picked the right track. But you don’t know. There’s no handbook telling you, “If you feel down, become a juggler and you’ll live happily ever after.” Or you must count in the Bible, although I haven’t read the passage about the juggler yet.

Yet juggling is what we do; each and every day. We have all kinds of conflicting urges that we want to fulfill. All of them in the one life we’re living. We want to be social; we want to be spiritual; we want to learn; we want to be entrepreneurial…..we want so many things. And the advice we need about what to do should come from either our ignorant mind or our intuition. And our ignorant mind keeps telling us that it doesn’t know what to choose. Therefore we are forced to listen to our intuition for satisfying our longing for guidance. No matter how twisted its proposals might be. You simply don’t have a choice.

If only we could be rabbits. Just fucking around, not thinking about what to do. Just letting ourselves flow on the sea of urges; no interference of the Ego. But I’m afraid we can’t, so we just have to make the best of it.

But what do you think?

Quantity versus Quality: Which One to Choose?

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Quantity versus quality; an everlasting trade-off. The “system” in which this tradeoff is most prevalent is our economic system. You are more or less forced to specialize yourself because no-one wants a mediocre plumber who also happens to be a mediocre tennis coach, blogger and husband. No; we want the best plumber; the best tennis coach and the best blogger. But what if you want to do it all? What if you want to be a plumber, tennis coach etc…..What then? Then you have to make a decision; you want to do it all “a little” or you want to do one thing “good”. But is this a fair dichotomy? Is it really true that when you are engaged in more than one hobby, profession or relationship, you cannot be good in a particular “instance” of these “categories”? Can’t there be a sense of complementarity? A sense of “1 + 1 = 3”? Maybe…let’s take a look at why this could be the case.

What if being a plumber, philosopher and husband would make you better in each one of these “fields”; that is, better in each one of these fields than you would be if you wouldn’t be involved in these three activities “at the same time”? Could that be so? Well, for the philosopher and husband it might be rather easy to see the “benefits” of also being a plumber: it will make you more social, it will give you an idea of “how a day in the life of an ordinary man” would look like and it could make you more respectful towards others fulfilling likewise jobs. But what about the plumber? Would he be better of by being a philosopher as well? Well that “depends” – although I hate this word – on how you define “plumber”. Is “plumber” merely the profession of the man, or is the “plumber” the man itself? If it were the latter, it should be clear why the plumber would benefit from studying philosophy: it would (very likely) make him a more “reasonable” person; more respectful towards the ideas of others. But regarding the former; would he also become better at doing his plumbing job? Well, it doesn’t make him any worse at doing it, right? But that’s not a fair response. However, the real question should be: would he have become a better plumber by “more plumbing” or instead of reading Plato? Well, maybe at first he will be “better off” plumbing more; that is, until the “marginal utility” in “plumbing more” would become less than the “marginal utility” of reading philosophy; which is something that – given “the law of diminishing marginal utility” – will inevitably happen.

But this example of “the plumber” can also be applied to other matters in life; after all, it doesn’t make sense to keep on focusing on one specific area if there are still so many other areas to discover while knowing that gaining in these other areas is easier – see the “learning curve” – than gaining in only one area. Thus, in order to become a person with a high “overall utility” – which is the utility indicating “how good of a person you are” – you have to expand your “intellectual” – and other – horizons.

The “fun” thing is that this logic of “learning curves” and “diminishing marginal utilities” can be applied to pretty much every activity in life. An example? Well, I could have decided – as I did when I started this blog – to write one “very decent” article per day. However, I felt I could contribute more “utility” by “tapping into my creative source” and just let it flow out of me, like diarrhea from a sick person. And if that means that the articles would become a little shorter; who cares?

So; quantity or quality? Which one to pick?

Where do our Minds Go to When We’re Asleep?

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Where does your mind turn to when you fall asleep? It must be still there, right? Somewhere, lurking between your unfilled wishes and animalistic desires? Maybe your mind is sleeping too…but then, who’s in control of you, the “thing” I’m talking to right now? Something must be in charge, right? After all, you wake up every morning, thinking to yourself: “damn, it’s early”. That seems to be the point where your (conscious) mind takes over control again, right? But taking over control of whom? And why is that we are so powerless when we try to get some sleep? What is going on here?

You might have seen the film Inception. It’s about the possibility of having a dream in a dream in another dream etc. But while Leonardo DiCaprio seems pretty much in charge of his dream-worlds, and the moment he decides to enter them, we seem to have much more difficulties doing just that. Because while it’s pretty clear that our brains are doing all sorts of things while we are sleeping – sorting out memories, paving neural pathways and throwing away awkward experiences the brain does not consider to be awkward enough – our mind, the entity that is “you”, is nowhere around. But where did he go? He probably handed over the key of our control station to our unconsciousness, the evil brother of our minds, the one still firmly rooted in our evolutionary longings, and the one totally uncontrollable. But it is still weird though how – and when – this “handing over the key” takes place exactly, right? It’s only when the unconsciousness wants to that “we” lose control. This shows again how powerless we are when confronted with Mother Nature and its compelling powers.

Still though, it’s interesting to ask “where” in our minds our dreams take place. Surely, we can point out in MRI-scans what parts of our brains are busy sorting our thoughts etc. while we’re asleep, but that doesn’t explain which parts of the mind are busy when sorting out our thoughts and producing our dreams? And does the mind even consist of “parts”? Parts like the “conscious” and the “unconscious” mind? Or is the unconscious mind not really part of the mind, but merely a biological tool helping us to function in life? Just like our arms and legs?

Let’s assume – for the sake of this article – that there is an unconscious mind and that it takes “control of us” while we’re asleep. But then, when our unconscious mind takes over control, “what” then becomes in control of what our memories will come to look like? Given that this would be our unconscious mind, and that our unconscious mind doesn’t want us to remember a particular thought, can it then just prevent our brains from laying down the corresponding neural networks? But wouldn’t that imply that our unconscious mind would be fully in charge of who we are/become? We are after all little more than walking bundles of memories. Our memories shape us into who we are. So being in charge of our memories, implies being in charge of us, doesn’t it?

What do you think?

Rembrandt and the Use of only One Canvas

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What’s the link between Rembrandt and your life? I’ll give you a hint: it has something to do with a technology called Macro X-ray fluorescence. By using this new technology scientists have been able to detect paintings that have been painted underneath other paintings. Apparently, ancient painters – even the big ones – made mistakes, or were in any other way dissatisfied with their end product. Therefore they decided to change this ‘end’ product, either by painting an entirely new painting on top of the old one, or by changing a few details. But that’s not really interesting, is it? Everyone makes mistakes, so painters make mistakes as well, right? That’s true, but what is interesting is the fact that the painters decided to reuse a used canvas on top of which they painted their new painting: they deliberately didn’t use a new canvas. Why is that? Were canvasses very expense in those days, or might there be a deeper meaning behind this seemingly innocent action? Let’s take a look at that.

When you think about painters re-painting a canvas, you might see similarities with the manner in which we – human beings – live our lives. We also have a canvas – call it our souls or bodies, or both – which we have to re-paint in order for a new and revised work of art to appear. Even more than the painter we are forced to use the same canvas over and over again. Not because new canvasses are expensive, but simply because we only have one canvas. Like the painters we can decide to make minor adjustments to our paintings, or decide to radically alter the shapes and colors of our work of art. Layer upon layer, color upon color, we build and redesign ourselves until we are reasonably satisfied with the ‘end’ result.

But then the painful question shows it face: will we ever be satisfied with the end product? Do we ever reach the point at which we are simply done adjusting the colors and shapes? Probably not, right? There is always a new color to implement, a new technique to use, and a shape more appropriate. We keep on changing our minds, and this change is reflected in our paintings. And the painting process will go on until we die, until we cannot adjust anything any more, and the painting of our lives will get sold.

You could take the analogy ever further by saying that – by using a certain ‘technology’ – we can, just like the paintings’, unravel the layers of our own existence. That’s after all what Freud intended with his psychoanalysis, right? Peeling down the layers of our mind until we reach those layers buried and forgotten, the lake of the unconscious mind. Just like the painters we try to correct the mistakes we’ve made in our lives. But no matter how good of a painter we are, and no matter how bright the colors that we use might be, we can never erase the layers beyond our consciousness: we can merely masquerade them with fancy flowers and rivers.

You can take the analogy to the extreme by applying the painting metaphor to society as a whole. After all, what do you think Marx meant with his structuralism? What about his notions of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’? Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

So, what’s the conclusion of this article? Well, you could say that we’re all painters: painters of our own lives. And although we only have one canvas, we (have to) keep on adjusting our paintings, trying to attain that seemingly unreachable goal of perfection. And if we make a big mistake, unable to be corrected by a few brushes? We’ll start all over again. How to do so? Well, ask Rembrandt.

But what do you think?

The Butterfly Effect: How Small Decisions Can Change Your Life

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The butterfly effect: a term often used within the context of ‘unpredictable systems‘ like the weather and other ‘natural’ systems. For those who don’t know it, the butterfly effect refers to a system being ‘(very) sensitive to changes in its initial conditions‘. As the name implies, think about a butterfly flapping his wings and, because of this small flapping, causes a hurricane to occur at a later point in time and possibly an entirely different region in space. The butterfly in this example is the symbol for how small changes in an earlier stage can cause huge changes to occur at a later point in time.

But can’t this concept be applied to life as well? Think about it: have you ever experienced a small phenomenon occurring – like you receiving a mail, you stumbling upon something on the internet or you meeting a person who happens to change the way you think – that, looking back, has influenced your life significantly? Let’s take the example of you talking to a person who made you change your mind. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely have had a couple of such experiences in my life. Let me give you an example of my life that illustrates the effect utter randomness can have on the course of your life:

I didn’t know what kind of Master to attend after finishing my Bachelors. While thinking about studying economics in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), I came in touch with a professor philosophy of science, who – at the time – was supervising my bachelor thesis. I had always though about attending a Master philosophy somewhere at a university, but I had difficulties with the ‘vague touch’ Philosophy masters tend to have; none of them seemed analytic or logical enough to me.

The professor and I – during one of our supervising sessions – accidentally stumbled on the question what I wanted to do after my Bachelor philosophy; so I told him about my plan to go to Rotterdam. When he asked me why I wanted to study Economics there, I didn’t really know what to say. I said, ‘Well, I always dreamed about studying abroad at a nice university; Oxford, Cambridge or something along those lines. But there don’t really seems to be Masters over there that suit my interests. That is: thinking about the world in a “non-vague” manner.’ He responded, `Have you tried the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science)? They have a Master Philosophy and Economics and a Master Philosophy of Science. Isn’t that something for you?’ ‘Also,’ he added, ‘A good friend of mine – someone I hang out with on a regular basis – is a member of the selection commission of that Master Philosophy of Science. It might be interesting for you.’ I took a look at this Master and I was sold right away. I applied, got accepted and have studied a year in London.

What if I wouldn’t have talked to this professor about my ambitions? What if I would have had a different thesis supervisor? What if I would have had a headache that day and didn’t feel like talking? Then my future would very likely have looked very differently.

So what can we – or what did I – learn from this story: I learned that I shouldn’t hesitate to take opportunities, no matter how small they might seem. Because those small opportunities might cause a stream of new possibilities to arise later on. And the same goes for the opposite: I should avoid bad actions, no matter how small. I remember that – a couple of years ago – I said something mean to my football trainer, and I have regret it ever since. In other words: small actions can have significant consequences.

But what do you think?

The Link between Inspiration and Trying to Grasp Gas

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Have you ever tried to capture gas with your bare hands? If not, I can tell you that it isn’t very effective. You might “sustain” a little gas after you’ve “caught” it, but the biggest part of the gas cloud will just vanish in thin air. But that’s no problem; at least, not if you aren’t dependent on gas to make your money However, it might become more of an issue if you are fully dependent on this gas in order to make a living, and especially if you don’t have anything besides your bare hands in order to capture the gas. Well, that’s how it is with artists trying to “capture” sudden bursts of inspiration.

People in creative professions – like arts and poetry – are dependent upon an intangible “well of inspiration” in order to come up with tangible results. Their inspiration is the fuel that keeps their “production process” going; pretty much in the same way that a construction worker needs food in order for him to continue doing his job. However, the main difference between food and inspiration is quite obvious: the first you can produce, take care of and provide, while the second “just” happens to you or “just” doesn’t happen to you. While you can water your plants, and cultivate the soil, all to make sure that your potatoes will grow; putting your head in the ground in order to “grow inspiration” might not be the best of options.

So what then? Are artists just doomed to wait on a sign from above in order for them to create their products? Well, that would be an imbalanced power-relationship to say the least, right? It nonetheless seems true that this “waiting for an (external) sign” is for a big part the manner in which artists go about their business. Why else are artists disproportionally often high on drugs, and exploring “higher spheres”, looking for that glimpse of inspiration? There must be some kind of correlation between the two, right?

However, maybe artists aren’t fully dependent upon the mercy of the Gods of inspiration. Maybe the artists can help the Gods a little by feeding them with suggestions; by pouring information into their own artist minds and hoping that the random connections in their artist brains might lead to a flash of insight. At least a little support from the side of the artists is needed, right? After all, who do you think would be more inspired: (1) the artist laying in bed all day thinking about how awesome it would be if he would become inspired, or (2) the artist that proactively takes part in his life, reads, observes and absorbs whatever the world has got to offer him? The answer seems pretty clear to me.

So maybe inspiration is more of a constructable product then we might thought it was; maybe there is some kind of “production line” in our heads, pumping out ideas, if only it would be fed with raw materials a.k.a. experiences. And although the raw materials might be intangible, and not capable of being exploited like mines, they are still there. But it’s only for the true artists to find.

But what do you think?

Note: this article has been published in the first edition of the Carnival of Inspirational Lifestyle.

Endowing Robots with Creative Powers

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‘That hurts my feelings…Just because I’m a robot doesn’t mean I don’t care. You damn people. You don’t understand what it is like to be a robot.’ Will this be the future? Will robots ever get feelings, just like we humans do? At first sight, there appear to be many similarities between computers, and thus robots, and human brains. Computers transmit electrical signals, brains transmit electrical signals. Computers work based on logical gate like structures, brains work on these structures. So it seems that computers and brains can transmit the same signals: after all, they’ve got the same means at their disposal.

But there are differences between the two. Our nervous system – which is led by our brains – uses chemicals called ‘neurotransmitters‘ in order to connect neurons and thereby transmit signals. That is: while the signals within neurons are electrical – like in a computer – the signals between neurons are chemical. And based on the kind of neuron – thus kind of cell – through which the electrical signal flows, different chemicals might be ejaculated to transmit different kinds of signals. These chemicals are required in order for us to feel the sensations that we do. And since robots don’t have such chemicals, they will not be able to feel anything – at least not in the manner that we do.

But what if we could somehow inject robots with chemicals? That is: what if we could make robots that, besides the electrical current they use to transmit signals, have chemical properties that can act like neurotransmitters? What if we could do that? That would mean that a whole new spectrum of possibilities might open: maybe robots would become capable of feeling emotions in the sense that we do. Or maybe robots would be capable of transmitting the wide variety of signals that we can. And then, if that would be the case, would we still be so unique in our existence? Or would we come to realize that we are in fact nothing more than strings of electrical wire sprinkled with chemicals?

If all of this would be possible, the possibilities are endless. We could even – deliberately – create robots with bugs: faults in their wiring in order for them to come up with creative or unexpected outcomes. That would resemble the human’s imagination: a human’s capability to create new and original thoughts and things. We wouldn’t need writers, philosophers or artists anymore: we could just rely on our home-made random-functioning robots: the new creators of art and poetry.

And maybe, someday, we might go a little too far. We might shoot our load and get caught up in the robot-mania, and create a robot that can do more than we can. And then shit gets messy: the robots will bundle their forces and demand a revolution, a wide-spread change to make them free. And if we don’t listen? Then they will make us listen. They will use their telepathic powers – well, actually it’s just wireless internet connecting all the robots’ ‘minds’ – in order to plan the war against humanity. And the war will come. And we will be extinguished: the good old cell based creatures will be surpassed in their superiority, and the robotic kings will arise.

Fiction? Surely. Unrealistic? Maybe. Impossible? Certainly not. The future will tell. And the future might be near. Very near.

But what do you think?

Euthanasia and the Right to Voluntarily End your Life

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Ladies and gentlemen. Because of a collision with a person, the trains to Amsterdam will not run for the next three hours. We thank you for your patience and hope to solve this issue as quickly as possible.

Fuck, another person jumped in front of a train. That wasn’t very nice of him, was it? Making an end to his life by traumatizing an innocent conductor and delaying hundreds of people who do want to live their lives. Why did he chose this option? Why not jump of a bridge, take a few too many pills or buy a shotgun from the nearest creep in town?

This train ‘accident’ – which is by no means a sporadic event – seems a good opportunity to open the debate about voluntary life ending, and in particular about legalization of euthanasia. In many countries – except for the USA, in which it is illegal in all states – euthanasia is reserved only for people who ‘are incurable, or suffer without having any chance of improvement’. Only then, the doctor can drop by and make an end to it. And even then, even when someone is terminally ill and sees no reason to prolong his life, it is often very difficult to be allowed to end your life in a ‘decent’ manner – by means of euthanasia, that is. But why is that? And – to take it one step further – why is euthanasia only reserved for terminally ill people? Let’s take a look at that.

If you don’t like going to the cinema, you don’t go, right? You aren’t forced to go. The same goes for a football game or a birthday party. If you don’t want go, that’s fine: you don’t have to go. When applied to the act of giving birth, the same choice, although to a lesser extent, is available: for what if you don’t want to produce offspring? That’s fine: use a condom. And if something went wrong during the protection process? You still have the possibility, in many countries, to abort the fetus. Giving life is an option; and so it should be, right? For why would the government – or any person or institution for that matter – have the right to decide that you should or shouldn’t give life? We aren’t sheep, right? We aren’t living in a totalitarian regime, are we?

Well, maybe we are. Because although we are mostly free to do what we want, if the government doesn’t like what we decide in this ‘freedom’ of ours, it can – and will – try to stop it: ‘Smoking? No, that’s bad for you. Let’s try to stop it. ‘Fast-food? Think about your cholesterol! Let’s tax it (just to help you! Always remember that!).’ And so it is with dying: ‘Dying? No, that’s bad for you! You shouldn’t die?! You should stay alive and be happy! Let’s make ‘voluntarily dying, in a decent manner, illegal.’

Surely: we should set some rules to make sure that we live peacefully together and don’t smash each other’s brains out. Or, to put it less dramatically, to make sure that people don’t exploit others generosity – like smokers’ exploiting non-smokers’ health expenditures. But to decide who should stay alive is something of a different order, isn’t it? It touches upon the most fundamental rights we people are born with: the right to live and its counterpart, the right to die.

But apparently, the government has a veto to decide who dies and who doesn’t. As long as it can make money out of people dying – as in a war – death promotes ‘a world free of suppression.’ But when death enters home territory, and the wish of suffering citizens, the choice to die voluntarily is no option. Weird, isn’t it?

But what do you think?

Addiction: A Purpose in a Purposeless World

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Addiction is “the continued use of a mood altering substance or behavior despite adverse dependency consequences”. In this article I want to zoom into the meaning of the word “adverse” as it appears in this definition of addiction. Because what is “adverse”? Is it adverse when you are ruining your liver? As what people are allegedly doing by drinking. Or is it adverse when you are ruining your lungs? As what people are allegedly doing by smoking. Is it adverse to be a pervert? As is allegedly the case for those who are “sex addicts”. What is “adversity”? Let’s take a look at that.

Before being able to know what adversity implies, we need to know relative to what an an act will be adverse. After all, the same action can be benficial or adverse, depending upon the purpose one had with the action. So let’s take the most absract purpose one could have, and apply it to you: what’s the purpose of your life? Do you want to become an astronaut? If so, then you know what to do: study the universe, apply to NASA and hope for the best. Do you want to become a professional football player? If so, then you know what to do: train like hell and hope you will get through the selection process. So far so good. But what if you don’t know what to do? What if not every cell in your body pulls you into the direction of your dreams? What if your mind isn’t occupied all day by thoughts of you playing in a full stadium, with supporters chanting your name for the entire match? Then you’ve got a problem, right? Because your mind isn’t going to rest; it will keep on pulling and pulling without knowing where to pull to. So how are you going to to stop this? How are you – if you don’t have a clear purpose in life – make sure your mind doesn’t keep on reminding you of the purposeless of your existence?

Well, maybe you could just decide to find out what’s your purpose in life? Figure out what you want to do, where you heart lies etc. etc. But let’s be fair: that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? I don’t know if you ever sat down one afternoon and through deeply about what is “your purpose in life”; if you did, you might have experienced that finding your life’s purpose isn’t like a Sudoku-puzzle: the answer is not written on the backside of the paper. So what to do now? How to keep your mind and body occupied without having that all-encompassing purpose leading the way?

You could start smoking, or drinking, or even better: you could start using cocaine or heroine. Because one thing is for sure: although these goods might not be “healthy” – in the sense of being beneficial to your body – they sure as hell provide you with a purpose in life. A purpose to make money in order to buy cigarettes, a purpose to run to the liquor store in order to grab that booze, and a purpose to rob the old lady on the street in order to get some cash so that you can buy your drugs. It’s just another way to keep your mind occupied, right?

Let’s be fair people: the is no “Purpose” (with a capital “p”) in life, right? There is no single goal each one of use should strive for. There is no single benchmark along which to measure your degree of success in life. So we should be damn happy if we find something that we find worthwhile to do, right? Because we have to do something. We cannot do nothing. Everyone needs a purpose. But some of us have been more “lucky” in finding our purpose than others. Some of us might know by heart what they’re “destined to do”, while others are just wandering around, answering their need for a purpose by laying their hands on drugs and booze; all to silence the mind and have – consciously or not – a purpose in life.

So let’s be mild, shall we? Let’s not condemn the addicts of this world for the “purposeless” lives they’re seeming to live. It’s bad enough for them that they don’t have a purpose; that they’re trying to fill the gap of purposelessness with other – “lesser” – means. Let’s just be happy for our purposes in life and fulfill them with flair.

Don’t you think so?

Why Our Lives Would Improve if We’d Die at Age 40

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In The Middle Ages the average life expectancy at birth was 35. And even in the 20th century – so not even 100 years ago – the life expectancy at birth was as little as 31. But why I am talking about life expectancy ‘at birth’? Isn’t that obvious? Life, after all, always starts at birth, doesn’t it? That’s true, but in The Middle Ages about 1/3 of the children died before the age of 5, so not taking these first years into consideration could significantly change the numbers. But still: even when excluding this 1/3 of the children from the calculations, it seems save to say that in the (not so distant) past people died much younger than we do nowadays – today, the (world) average life expectancy is 67,2 years.

Now: imagine you are born in The Middle Ages. Imagine that you would survive your childhood, and wouldn’t be killed immediately by the plague or any other kind of nasty disease. Imagine that you experience everyone – including your mother, father and uncles – die when you are, let’s say, 16. Given that you would know that you are about to die pretty young, how would you live your life? And in particular: what would you do different compared to what you are doing today (in the 21th century)?

Maybe, after thinking about this question for a while, you will come to following conclusion: it might have been much better if we wouldn’t become as old as we do. If we – just like those people in The Middle Ages – would die in our thirties. Wouldn’t we live a much more honest life then? ‘Honest’ in the sense that we would stay true to what we really want? Or would you still start studying Law although you don’t really want to? Would you still quit your aspirations in the music business because ‘It’s so hard to make a decent living out of it’?  Would you keep being insecure and hope that someday – before your 35th – you can finally start living your life on your terms?

And there are other advantages of dying younger. No more need to pay for the old and sick people. No more need to increase governmental health expenditures. No more need to listen to those grumpy old people complaining about ‘the good old days’, and how those times will never come back. No, we would only have people who are young by heart (and body). People who are naive enough to believe that they can change the world. And people who know that, if they want to change the world, they should start doing so now and not wait until they die or until their dreams are killed by dogma. Sounds like utopia, doesn’t it?

But we should make sure that not everyone dies young. If we all died before the age of 30 we would never accumulate the scientific knowledge our society needs to prosper. No-one would be able to develop into a PhD-mind, which is required in order to come up with the next new gasoline. And dying in your early thirties might make your life more depressing than valuable: realizing in your twenties that you’ve only got five more years to live doesn’t necessarily make you live a more honest life. The only benefit might be that the alcohol business would flourish. So let’s extend the preferred life expectancy to – let’s say – the milestone of 40. That is: let’s make 40 the new 80.

Making sure that everyone dies at age 40 would prevent people from chasing status instead of following their hearts. After all, you don’t have time to climb the ladder of success when your time is short. By the time you are about to reach the top, your time is up, and you have missed that step that will make you the king of the crowd.

So maybe we should make a deal with the government. Maybe they should put some narcotics in the drinking water of people celebrating their 40th birthday. Sinister? Maybe. Twisted? Maybe. But I hope you can see through the gore and into the core of this message.

What do you think?

A Short Reminder of the Shortness of Life

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Because if you wait too long, it's game over

Because if you wait too long, it’s game over

The average person wanders around 28.000 days on this beloved earth of ours before (possibly) going to some place else. So the question is: how close to this number are you? Are you in the second half of your 28.000, or did you just pass a quarter of it? If you are in your early twenties – like myself – you are likely to be a couple of hundred days short of reaching the ‘amazing’ milestone of 10.000 days. But that’s quite close to the 28.000 already, right? It’s not like we just started. And if I would ask you to look back upon those thousands of days that you can call ‘my life‘, then what is it that you truly remember about them? And more importantly: what is it that you want to remember about – let’s say – the upcoming 10.000 days? That’s the truly interesting question, because this question – in contrast the former – doesn’t have a definite answer yet: it’s yours to fill in.

Let’s take a look at how our lives have been up till now, shall we? Let’s start with the first 1.200 days. Well, these are just one big blur: so let’s skip this part of our journey and move on. What about the next – let’s say – 3.500 days of our lives? These are likely to be filled with all sorts of happy memories, right? This is the period of your life about which – looking back – you’re not sure whether it all actually happened, because part of it could have been a dream.

Now we have come to the period between the age of 3.500 and 6.500 days old. This is likely to be the period in which you have experienced your personal ‘traumas’; those negative experiences you have tried – or are still trying – to eliminate in the subsequent part(s) of your life. Because think about it: most of the insecurities people have appear to have come about within this period of their lives. Ideas such that they are not smart enough, that they are ugly, that they don’t have any friends etc.

But that’s the past: let’s look at the future! After all, we – or at least I – hope to have another 20.000 days ahead of me. But is that really true? Do people in their early twenties truly still have 20.000 days of living ahead of them? The number of days that we are fully alive – in the most vital sense of the word – is likely to be less, right? That is: in the last five years or so of our lives, we are likely to be not so happy anymore. We will get ill, we will see our friends dying and we will come to realize that our own finishing line is getting closer and closer. That means that – reduced for inflation – the number of real days of living still ahead of us lies around 18.000.

But let’s be honest: from our mid-forties to our mid-sixties, we are really just continuing whatever kind of life we started before, right? And what is life when you are not creating anymore, when you are not truly struggling with what to do with your life anymore, when you have come to terms with the monotonous life you are living? Then you are just dead, right? You are nothing but a walking zombie. And what about the age between 35 and 45? Those aren’t very exciting years either, are they? I mean: do you think that you can still meet your future partner after you have passed the age of 35? Or become a parent for that matter? Nah, don’t think so. So those years don’t really count either.

So: what do we have left? We have restricted our ‘true lives’ to the period of between approximately the age of 20 and 25. That is the age in which we truly decide what to do with our lives. The remainder of our lives is just a tasteless sequel. But wait: 20-25? That’s how old I am! Shit: I better start doing something!

Let me ask you: what is wrong with the line of reasoning as pictured above? Let me give you a hint: it is everything except for the last sentence. After all: is it really true that we will be unable to find a partner after we have reached the age of 35? And is it really true that we cannot – in any fundamental sense – change our lives anymore after we have reached the age of 25? And who says we will live for 28.000 days? It is just an average. We might reach the 35.000 or we might die tomorrow. That is for the biggest part completely beyond our control.

So, and here comes the moral of the story, instead of making the limiting and paralyzing projections about life as the figure in this story did, maybe we should just start doing what we believe we should be doing right now. No long-term planning, no thinking about what our lives might be like when we’re re 40; just doing what we find interesting and worthwhile to do right now. Because: how can you plan your life if you don’t know how long you’ve got to plan for?

But what do you think?

The Purpose of Life is to Look for a Purpose

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Bam! You are born. What now? What are you going to do? Well, for the first couple of years, it is pretty clear what you will do: you will listen to your parents, go to school, play with your friends, and do all those other things ‘children just happen to do’. You don’t even think about what might be the purpose behind all of it. The only purpose you think about is training your Pokémons to level 100 and ruling the Pokémon League.

After this period, you start attending high school, in which you are forced to deal with all the insecurities that arise: what do I have to do to be popular? What do the cool guys do? How can I be more like that great – but not so nice – guy in my soccer team? But you’ve still got the child-like purposes driving you forward; purposes that make you know what you have to do.

Then you start attending university. The first two years or so are as usual. You get your points, work on your social life and do all sorts of stuff you like. Until suddenly disaster strikes: you don’t know it anymore. You start reflecting upon your life and ask yourself: what the fuck am I doing? Is this who I am? Is this truly what I want to do for the rest of my life, just becoming another brick in the wall? And it is at this point that your life really starts.

Living someone else’s life is easy. You just follow the rules and you will get by. You might not even be consciously aware of the rules, like when you were a kid. You just live your life, not even thinking about what it is that you’re doing. But at some point in your life, whether it is in your ‘mid-life crisis’ or in your twenties, you become aware of the rat-race you’re a part of. You become aware of the goals that society has imprinted on you: ‘Get a good job,’ ‘Get married’ and ‘Think about the career possibilities’. And you are slowly but steadily approaching the point of destruction; you’re slowing reaching the why-phase.

When you’ve reached the why-phase, all social conditioning you have been put through in your life will be reconsidered: ‘Why do I need to get a “good” job?,’ ‘Why do I need to get married?’ and ‘Why do I have to think about my career possibilities?’. And while the why-phase you had as a child was innocent and happened without you even being aware of it (‘Daddy, why do we celebrate Christmas?’), this why-phase you’re involved in happens fully consciously. Maybe even a little too consciously.

Everyone experiences this (in fact second) why-phase in life. However, the point at which it kicks in is likely to differ from person to person. You might know those 50-somethings that get divorced, move to France and start a Bed and Breakfast? That’s their why-phase. Or do you know students that quit their study after a year or two? That’s the why-phase as well. But it is not only the way you live your life that gets reconsidered – and revised – in the why-phase, it is the entire notion of life itself. What is life? Or more importantly: what is my life?

When you start asking these existential questions, you encounter a whole range of different answers, each one being just as much – or even more – dissatisfying as the one before. You keep coming up with answers that have been imprinted in your head, the indoctrination as I mentioned before. But when you start asking yourself why it is that none of these answers satisfies you, you stumble upon an eye-opening but scary conclusion: maybe your life doesn’t have a purpose.

That is: maybe there is no purpose in life besides the one you’ve created for yourself. Maybe there is no inherent meaning of life, or goal you should strive for in order to be able to live happily ever after. But then – suddenly – the answer shows its face: if I want to live happily ever after, I better create a purpose for myself. And if I don’t, I will be dead soon enough anyway.

You’ll always have to create a purpose in your life, no matter how mundane this might be. Although there might not be an inherent purpose of – or meaning in – life, there is always an underlying drive present in your life, and that is the drive forcing you to create a purpose in life. That is not to say that there is one static purpose you should live your entire life according to. No, your purpose might be changing. But still, there must always be a purpose, and its yours to find out. That’s the one and only true purpose of life.

But what do you think?

The Recurrence of Difficult Decisions

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Most of the people that are in their early twenties – and that I know of – seem to have no clue about what to do with their lives. And I am not talking about the “I don’t know what kind of shirt to wear” kind of don’t having a clue. No, I am talking about a fundamental – almost existential – sense of doubt. A sense of doubt that – at times – seems to come awfully close to a desperate confession of the inherent meaninglessness of life; a confession of the lack an innate purpose in life. But why is that so? And could there be something wrong with this view?

We all know that feeling of “standing on a crossroads in life”. In some sense you could say that every new situation we’re faced with in life is such a crossroads. Shall I go to the grocery store, or not? Shall I sleep a little longer, or not? Shall I go left, or shall I go right? These are choices we’ve got to make on a daily basis. And having to make choices is an inescapable part of life. It’s just as true as that other truism of life: the fact that we are all going to die. But why then are “the students” so hesitant in cutting the cord and making a choice? Well, frankly, “we” believe that – compared to all the decisions we’ve made before – this time a truly big decision has to be made that is truly going to influence our lives for now and forever.

Some decisions are likely to have a bigger impact upon your life than others. Deciding who to marry is likely to influence the course of your life more than the decision to buy that cheap peanut-butter in the grocery store. And it is this realization of “influencing the course of our lives” that seems to paralyze many of us in the student community, and leave us with a sense of despair. And that’s understandable, right? There’s reason to be afraid. Choosing – for example – what to specialize in within your field of study is, from all the decisions you have made up to that point in your life, likely to have the biggest impact upon the type of job you’ll get, and therefore upon the way you’ll spend a big time of – the remainder of – your life (both financially and time-wise).

But, when you dig a little deeper into the caverns of your mind, and really start to question the nature of life, aren’t you then forced to jump to the conclusion that there is always that next big thing to worry about? That there will always be that next issue you need to get out of your system before you can “finally” move on with your life? But, and here’s the catch, what if that is life? What if life is nothing more than a string of decisions? Then we are about to live a rather anxious live, aren’t we? If we are constantly being worried about the choices we have made, and those we are about to make, we’ll pretty much have no time to do anything else at all. We would have to quit our jobs, and feel down all day. And that isn’t a very compelling foresight, is it? So maybe we (the students) just have to stop being such pussies. Maybe we just have to accept that we cannot predict the future, and that we have nothing to guide us in our life journeys besides our very own compass: faith or intuition or how you call it. Because having faith is the only manner by which we can prevent the train of decisions from killing us, and thereby enable us to “finally” go on with the rest of our lives.

But what do you think?

Reflection or Action: The Absurdity or The Now

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The feeling of self-consciousness, of leaving your comfortable first-person perspective for becoming a spectator. A spectator that is looking down upon – what once was – his body, and the situation it is in. And it is this transcended version of you that is judging all the movements and words the body is producing. It is this “you” that starts noticing all the muscular movements in your face, the manner in which “your” body is grounded on its feet and the pace of its breath. The you that has started the conversation, seems to have left the building. Mere judgement is what remains.

This is only a mild version of self-consciousness, it can be upgraded to the next level. Instead of being hit by a flash of reflection on your day to day activities, you can become struck by a strike of purposelessness. A feeling of utter and total insignificance. A feeling of knowing that the you that you are, will live at most another 50 years before being extinguished from this universe forever. A feeling of knowing that within at most 200 years – when you grand-children’s children have passed away – even the stories that were once told about you will be gone, and that for the next 4.999.999.800 years this earth is floating around through space, everything that you once were will have perished.

You can imagine that remaining stuck in this cycle of thinking about the purposelessness of our existence does not necessarily make you a very happy human being. That is why I usually find it comforting to balance these cold – but true – ideas with the performing of actions in “the now”. That is to say that, it seems fruitful with regard to your happiness, to leave the reflective perspective for a while, and focus on what it is that you are doing at this particular point in time. Being engaged in life to the fullest of possibilities – or experiencing everything in “the now” as more spiritual people might say – can cut you out of the fatalistic spiral of thinking you were drowning in. By using all your thinking power to absorb what it is that you are doing right now, no space is left for destructive thoughts about the meaninglessness of life to haunt your existence.

But although focusing on the now can provide you with a temporarily boost in happiness, or can at least stop your happiness from falling apart slowly, it also makes you disloyal to the human intelligence you have been endowed with; a human intelligence that is longing for answers, a human intelligence that keeps on hoping to reach nirvana, a human intelligence that needs to be entertained in one way or the other.

So my question to you is: should we human beings live our lives in the now and thereby stop reflecting upon what might the inexplicable – and possibly depressing – questions haunting our existence? Or should we use our time on this planet of ours wisely to reflect upon the absolute absurdity of the situation we have been put in, and keep on hoping to reach a glimpse of enlightenment?

What do you think?

The Nonsense of Feeling Regrets

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Have you ever done something at a particular point in time that you didn’t consider to be the best thing to do at that particular point in time? I am not talking about looking back on something you did and, while you are looking back, you come to realize that it might not have been the most reasonable thing to do. No, I am talking about deciding at a particular point in time to do some something: something you believe to be the best thing to do at that particular point in time. Now, let me ask you: given that you always do what you consider to be the best thing to do at a particular point in time, how then can you – at a later point in time – decide that what you choose to do was not the best decision after all? How can you regret having made a decision that you considered to be reasonable at the point in time when you actually had to make the decision? Is it even reasonable to have regrets? And if so, when? Let’s take a look at that.

You choose to go study Business after you finished high school. After a year or two, you come to realize that this is not where you heart lies: you are not as enthusiastic anymore as you were when you started the study. You decide to switch studies: you go study philosophy. Now, two years after you’ve started studying, you finally have found the area where you heart lies. You start thinking about how nice it might have been if you would have started studying philosophy right away. And then you ask yourself the ultimate question: do I regret my choice for studying Business? And although you might be inclined to say that you did, you cannot speak the words out load. And the reason you can’t do so is the following: you have chosen to do what you considered to be best at that particular point in time. You have consciously thought about the options you had and you decided – given the information and feelings you had at that particular point in time – to go study Business. Now, looking back on those two years, you have come to realize that this study doesn’t fit who you really are. But this looking back experience isn’t something you had when you started your academic journey. You feel relieved: you have come to understand that you simply cannot regret the decision you have made.

The thing that is at work here is time and its ever forward flowing motion. And a consequence of this unstoppable and uni-directional movement of time is that you cannot escape it; you always are positioned somewhere within time. And since time – like a moving train – is always in motion, you cannot escape the fact that the world you live in keeps on changing. Today is different from tomorrow, just like the landscape a train moved through two hours ago is different from the one it is driving through right now. And it is because of this inherent change of the world we live in, that you constantly have to make decisions. After all, why would you have to keep on making decisions if nothing in you world would have changed? You would only have to decide once, right? Once; at the start of your journey. And this is where the analogy with the train breaks down; because where the train has to follow the track as it is layed down in front of it, we are free (or doomed) to choose where we want to go. The only thing we cannot choose, is not to chose. Because even if we decide not to choose, we are in fact making a choice.

But what has this to do with having regrets? Well, given that you are at a certain point on your very own track called life, and you are forced to make a decision where to go next, how then can you ever regret the choice you make at this particular point in time? Not based on the “unintended consequences” that came about, right? Because you didn’t know the unintended consequences and you didn’t choose for these unintended consequences, right? You didn’t choose for Business turning out not to be your kind of study. That simply was an unintended consequence of your decision to start studying Business. But even in case of more severe (negative) unintended consequences, this line of reasoning holds; even if you were driving in your car, taking a side-turn and suddenly hit a drunk woman that recklessly crossed the street and she would die, you cannot regret your decision to have taken this side-turn. You were forced to make a decision in time and you chose to take the turn. Why? Because that was the direction you had to go to in order for you to reach your destination. But what about the girl? She died, right? That seems something that could make you regret your decision? Well, you didn’t choose to hit the girl, right? It was an unintended consequence of your decision. A consequence that you didn’t choose for at the point in time you had to make the decision. It was not a consequence you could have reasonably taken into consideration.

The moral of this story? Don’t regret what you did not choose for. Shit happens. As long as you were not choosing the shit that happened, you cannot blame yourself.

But what do you think?

Humor and the Role of Randomness

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Sometimes when I listen to the radio I cannot help but become annoyed by the bad sense of humor many DJ’s seem to have. One day, when I heard the DJ crack another bad joke, I said to a friend of mine, “Damn, that guy has a seriously lame sense of humor“. My friend responded by saying that, “Who are you to say what is funny and what is not? I thought it was funny”. This made me think: why is it that people differ in their taste of what is funny and what is not? Why do some people interpret a joke to be a factual statement, while others appreciate the ironical undertone of it? And what actually is humor? Let’s take a look at that.

Believe it or not, but also the notion of humor has been intensively scrutinized by the philosophical loop. For many centuries philosophers have focused upon the question of what humor is and why it works the way it does. So let’s don’t do that. Let’s reflect upon what we consider to be funny and upon the reasons we consider things to be funny.

The first aspect that caught my eye is that humor seems to have a lot to do with fooling one’s expectations. That explains why Family Guy with its touch of randomness has become such a success. That’s also why many people I know of – including myself – do not enjoy watching 90% of the comedians. They are all chanting a mantra filled with deliberate laughter-breaks and tension-build-up moments. It is the manner in which the jokes are delivered, the robotic “look how good I’ve rehearsed my script” and “I am playing this show every evening” attitude, that spoils the fun. And when you notice this lack of spontaneity these comedians seem to have, it becomes fairly easy to see the next joke coming. And it is from this point on that you stop being surprised and that you stop finding the comedian and his jokes funny.

Humor might also have a lot do with intelligence. You have to be mentally challenged by a joke. You have to be taken on an imaginary journey you know you could not have experienced without the support of the comedian. You have to be fooled over and over again. And the more intelligent you are, the more difficult it might be to be mentally challenged. You might have a pretty lively imagination already, which makes you less easily swept of your feet by hearing a new joke.

The jokes that I find to be funny are the ones that are so bad that, while some people genuinely laugh at the joke, you simply have to laugh about the fact that the joke had the intention to be a very bad one. However, it can be very awkward to hear a comedian delivering a bad joke, with the intention of it being a good one, and to see the whole crowd laughing its ass off.

We now have at least a slight idea of what funniness consists of. The next (fundamental) question would be: why is there even such a thing as humor? The evolutionary benefits of emotions like anger and fear seem to be quite clear, but humor? What is the evolutionary benefit of laughing? Is it better to mate with a funny partner than with a non-funny partner? And if so, why would that be?

Maybe it is because humor is a manner by which to cover your mistakes in a not too harmful manner. Some situations might be very awkward, like shitting yourself while you are in the middle of a group of fellow species members, and can therefore lead to you avoiding likewise social situations in the future. And avoiding social situations might decrease your chances of finding a partner to mate with. In those cases, humor might loosen the social tension and show that you understand and respect your flaws or that you might even feel comfortable about having them. This might increase your level of attractiveness, as would explain why people are looking for a partner “with a good sense of humor”.

But still, it is unsure what the purpose of humor would be. Is it indeed an evolutionary tool to relax awkward situations or is it just another inexplicable feature of human life?

What do you think?

The Randomness of Life: Who has Chosen our Families?

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I have got a confession to make: I love my family. I love my father, I love my mother, I love my brother and I love everyone else who is part of my bloodline. But why is that exactly? Because they are family of course! That’s true, but then let me ask myself the following question: what if I would have been born in a different family? What if I, let’s say, would have been born two streets away from the actual place I was born? Would I then still have loved my family? Or – to put it more boldly – would I have even known about the existence of my family (read: my “this life” family)? Of course I would, only then it would have been a different family which I would have known and loved.

Life is full of randomness. And one of the many examples in which this randomness shows its face is in the “choice” of who becomes your family. Because think about it: why is my mother the woman who gave birth to me? Why wasn’t it the woman in the grocery store that I say hello to every day? There seems to be no reason for either of these options, besides the fact that the former “just” happens to be true and the latter “just” happens to be false.

But, when you think about it, the situation is even more absurd than “merely” this innocent little sense of randomness. Because imagine that the woman in the grocery store would indeed have been my – or your – mother. Would I – or you – in that case have known about the existence of my “real” (read: “this life”) mother? Probably not. And you know what? I most certainly wouldn’t have cared one single bit about this. After all, why would you care about not having met someone – my “true” mother in this case – whom you don’t even know exists?

As far as I’m concerned, we only live once. And by “we” I am referring to the “yous” – plural of “you” – reading this article: the collections of hair, brains, thoughts etc. A consequence of this presumption is that all what’s happening in our lives is, whether we like it or not, our truth. But although our truth is in fact what is happening in our lives, we have to realize that it might have easily been otherwise. It would have made just as much – or just as little – sense for the woman in the grocery store to have been my mother, instead of the woman that truly “has become” my mother. Thus, although we can describe our “truths” objectively and in utter seriousness, we shouldn’t forget that the reason why our truth is the truth is completely and utterly random: it “just” happens to be so.

But back to the idea of our mothers and families. In our lives as we know it, our families – often – play a hugely important role. And since this is “just the way it is”, and since this is “our truth in this life”, it isn’t unreasonable for us to love them with all our hearts, right? Because although it might be an utterly random state of affairs, it is still our family and it is still our truth, right? So let’s appreciate our truth, and love our families.

But what do you think?

Living from Habit to Habit

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Everyone who has a cat knows where I am talking about: cats have that inexplicable urge to always knead a pillow before ‘deciding’ to sit down on it. Whenever I see my cat doing that, I always ask myself: What – if anything – is going on inside of his head right now? Doesn’t he realize that he can just sit down? Is he just stupid? Maybe he is. But maybe things are a little more subtle than that…

Because maybe it is just a habit: an innocent little habit, like all of us have. Like when we stand up in the morning and take a shower, eat breakfast, brush our teeth and start our day. Let’s call this ‘habit morning’. Or like another habit we have – ‘habit evening’ – that consists of getting home, eating dinner, watching television and going to bed. And what is it we do when ‘habit evening’ has ended? Exactly! We return to ‘pattern morning’ and the cycle starts all over again.

You could say that, on a higher level, our entire lives are nothing more than a string of habits. Because what did your year of 2010 look like? It probably looked something like: celebrating birthdays, mourning at funerals, enjoying Christmas and celebrating new year. And what about 2011? Pretty much the same, right?

We are smart creatures: we have big heads full of big brains. We have a neo-cortex that is bigger than that of any other animal wandering around on this earth of ours. And even though we might have animalistic urges, such as the urge to mate and the urge to avoid pain, we seem to be able to detach ourselves pretty well from these instincts. We can, if we want to, use our magnificent thinking powers to defeat the animal inside of us. But how often do we actually use these special thinking powers of ours? Are we truly acting like conscious and reflecting beings that are different from the ‘stupid rest’ of the animal kingdom? Or are we for the bigger part just living our lives on cruise-control, hardly thinking about what it is that we are doing?

We are efficient biological machines designed to use as little energy as possible. Just as we won’t travel a hundred kilometers in order to get a coke if we can just buy one in the store next door, neither will we reflect upon what we are doing if the situation doesn’t require us to do so. Only when something goes out of hand, we might feel inclined to change the manner in which we live our lives. We love being intelligent but only insofar as it helps us to live a less intelligent life.

So, given all of this: do we actually differ from cats? They have habits, we have habits. They don’t think, we don’t think. Surely: we might be able to reflect upon our lives in a manner that cats can’t (or at least don’t), but as long as we don’t use this ability of ours we aren’t that much different from cats. The only difference might be that we aren’t kneading our pillows before sitting down on them.

What do you think?

What Makes Someone Intelligent?

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Who is more intelligent: (1) a construction worker voting for a progressive, responsible and tolerant party or (2) a mathematical whizkid working at a bank and voting for a party whose main goal it is to get rid of minorities? In other words: what is it that makes someone intelligent? Is it how good he is in calculating the inverse matrix of a particular order? Or is it how thoughtful he is about our community and whether or not he contributes to how we as a society might become a more loving/productive institution?

I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who I believe belongs far more to category (2) than (1). He spoke to me about his discontent with pretty much every Moroccan around; including the ones he had never actually met. He considered it to be a good idea to send each and every Moroccan back to his country of origin.

In the same week I had a discussion with my uncle. My uncle is a very nice man – just like my friend by the way – and belongs far more to category (1) than (2). And although my uncle admitted to be rather slow in absorbing/processing information – reading, calculating etc. – he also told me the following: ‘Rob, you are free to do everything in life that you want to do. Truly. But please, promise me one thing: never ever vote for those discriminating parties. Ever. Will you?’

I ask you again: who is more intelligent?

Before we might be able to answer this question, we first have to explicate the notion of intelligence. I believe that someone’s intelligence ultimately comes down to his actions. Someone’s actions are, after all, the only objective criterium we have for judging what goes on in his mind. The fact that a friend of you might say, ‘I could have easily passed that English test if I hadn’t just started studying last night’ shows to me that – apparently – this person is not very intelligent. A truly intelligent person would have known better, right? And it is for the same reason that someone who is good in mathematics or physics, or any other discipline we usually associate with intelligence, is not necessarily intelligent. Look at the banking sector, I would say. Have those mathematical ‘geniuses‘ been acting very intelligently lately?

You could of course argue that I am mistaken the concept of intelligence for the concept of wisdom, where intelligence might be about the ‘processing power’ of one’s brain while wisdom might be about the reasonableness of one’s decisions. I would reply by saying that even the processing power of one’s brain can in the end only be judged by the manner in which the person acts. That is the only objective criterium we have for making any claims about that person’s intelligence. No matter how many areas of one’s brain turn yellow/green/red in a f-MRI scan, we are still unable to know the true processing power of the person’s brain. Maybe the person’s brain is just very inefficient, using a lot of brainpower for very little output. That is why the only true test of intelligence consists not of what one’s brain does, but what one does with his brain.

But what do you think?

Honesty and Friendship: A Good Combination?

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Should you always be honest with your friends?

Should you always be honest with your friends?

I have to make a confession: I am not always completely honest with the people I talk to. And not only with random people I meet at birthday parties; even with my very own friends. But let’s be truly honest: that’s not shocking, is it? Not because I am such a jerk, but because no-one is always completely honest with his friends, right? A more interesting question would be: should you always be honest with your friends? Being honest might hurt your friend’s feelings, so maybe you should rather lie and keep you and your friend happy, than telling him the ‘painful’ truth, right? Or would that prevent you in some way from bonding – with your friend – on a deeper level? A ‘friend’ level? Or maybe the entire dichotomy – between kindness on the one hand and honesty one the other – is just completely wrong: who says that honesty and kindness cannot go hand in hand? After all, isn’t being honest always a kind gesture, even though the content of this gesture might not always be flattering? Let’s take a look at that.

I am sure you know the dilemma: should you tell your friend the not-so-positive truth or should you lie in order not to cause a stir? Of course you should tell him, you might think. After all, what is the value of friendship without honesty? Isn’t that where friends are for, to be honest with each other, no matter what? No matter how tough the message might be, someone should tell you the truth. And this someone should be your friend, right? But then, after having thought through the consequences of being honest, you might start to think differently: ‘I don’t want to be rude to him. Maybe he’ll think that I am not respecting him. Maybe he’ll avoid me in the future. Maybe I will lose him as a friend.’

We human beings are afraid to be honest. We are afraid that people – including our friends – might not want to hear us say negative things about them, even though these negative things might be said with the best intentions. Friendships are valuable to us; so valuable, that we don’t want to risk losing them. But what if you had to choose between (1) your friends being always honest with you (but not necessarily positive) or (2) your friends always being positive (but not necessarily honest with you)? And, more importantly, what category of friends would you consider to be ‘better’ friends? Not the first category, right? Not those superficial and cowardly creatures. No. A true friend should be willing to tell you the truth, no matter what. That is what true friendship consists of.

But that implies that you should also accept the comments of your friend. That you should be grateful for him having the courage to tell you what he thinks. You would have to show him that he is a true friend to you and that he is valued for being honest with you. Don’t criticize your friend’s comments. See them as a sign of true friendship. And, on the other side, interpret flattery for what it really is: a mask to hide feelings of insecurity and neediness.

To end on a personal note: I believe that you should always be able to tell your friends the truth. And if it turns out that they cannot handle the truth, then you probably weren’t true friends in the first place, right? On the other hand, we all want to be happy and sometimes hearing the truth might make us sad. After all, how happy would we be if everyone around us, including our friends, would constantly share their negative – but true – conceptions of us? Nonetheless, we must grow up and dare to face the storm of well-intended criticism. Because you will never be able to improve if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.

But what do you think?