A lifetime training ...

I was checking the key words that people looked up in the Internet and made them land into my blog ... curiously enough, there is a great part of these that have looked up for "Emotions a man worst enemy?".

Although what I have read suggests that emotions are not our worst enemy, there are some occasions that I still feel that way ...

The other day, took only one person to prove myself that I have not yet learned enough of self-control ... I was so frustrated first because of this person's attitude, and later because of my failure ... do not worry, I did not explode or yell or did something I could have later regret ... I simply could not let it go and simmered my anger which later caused me hideous distress :(.

I am afraid that there always will be situations like these, in which I simply wont be able to let it go ... although I try, I sometimes just feel tired loosing my willingness to keep things at ease. By then I wonder why it has to be me the one to be prudent? Why I have to stand people and their recursive abusive and careless behaviors?  YES! MY YIN SIDE HAD EMERGED ...

Fortunately, I can still hear my yang side most of the times. Thinking logically and trying to use my common sense, here are some of  my arguments that I use against myself to discourage my yin :

First. Suppose I decide no longer trying, suppose I reach the extreme point of zero tolerance towards people. It would feel good for a while just saying here and there some little trues, which people often do not like to hear (including myself). This in the long run would make other people label me as bitter, unfriendly and even evil person, and sooner or later this would be reflected in some sort of social rejection towards my person, which would bring up more severe consequences for anybody else but for myself. Because I have chosen to live within a society of men and women, I do not have any other option but to try my best.

Another option is going somewhere nowhere and live in isolation, but since man and women are naturally a social being, and I am not the exception to the rule ... definitely not an option :(

Second. Simmering anger is bad to my health. My mother used to tell me do not get upset you will have white hair very soon or a big sack of gallstones :) ... not sure how much truth there is in her advises, but surely simmering things that make us upset instead of cooling them down or shaking them off, in Goleman's words, is not healthy at all.

( I just found an article [here] that says that those who had less control over their anger also tended to be slower healers ... amazing is not it?)

Simmering ill thoughts is the worst thing ever we can do, it builds up more grudge and anger, it is just like an abyss, it pulls you even more into the dark. As Goleman have wrote in his book "Emotional Intelligence":

"The longer we ruminate about what made us angry, the more 'good' reasons and self-justifications for being angry we can INVENT".

"Anger builds on anger; the emotional brain heats up. By then rage, unhampered by reason, easily erupts in violence ... at this point their thoughts revolve around revenge and reprisal, OBLIVIOUS to what the consequences may be."


Third. It is always possible that things are not as bad as I perceive them. Yes, it could be that I am wrong ... or simply that other people is not doing things to hurt me, harm me or take advantage of me "purposely".

(Obviously this is my very very Yang side talking ... let it be!)

Fourth. I have always have liked challenges and instead of doing nothing I like to persevere in this interesting World of yours ... so why not trying and to think of better ways that can prevent myself of being so affected by other people's evil trips ... challenging, very challenging!

Fifth. I want to be happy :) ... why to distress and bitter my existence for unimportant matters? such a waste of my precious time :)

--

I sometimes feel like an alien  ... I think I need like other 2 lives to be a successful emotional intelligent human being ... Gosh!!! it is just like the tea learning ... a lifetime training [ref] :)

-erika

Of Unrealistic Models Modeling 'Reality'

In my last post, I made reference to something is called "social aspiration gap" by the RSA. After reading one of the latest posts of Matthew Taylor's blog, its concept now is clearer to me. I am sorry for the misunderstanding. The social aspiration gap they are concerned about is:

The existent gap between the current "social needs and expectations, and on the other, what the state and market can realistically provide"[ref].

The first ideas that came to my mind were the following. Agreeing in much with the RSA, I thought perhaps that there are three ways of approaching this "gap". I have talked quite a lot already of the first approach in this blog, which refers to nurture self-control, empathy and common-sense, and awareness of today's World challenges, this is ... a whole new way of thinking in Taylor's words. Second, we need to get the industry and economic corporations involve in these new way of thinking, because whether we like it or not, they drive our economy and therefore society (as I discussed in my previous post). The third one and last one, which I found definitely more impossible than the previous two, a new economic model ... (yes, I know I am a crazy dreamer, but what else I can do?)

I wonder what economists are doing nowadays ... is not that we have patched the current model already too much? I am not an economist, in fact I know very little, but I was thinking that it is maybe time to re-invent the wheel, rather than keeping in patching it.

This reminds me of Tomas Sedlacek in his book "Economics of Good and Evil" (which also I first heard from an RSA video and I am about to finish ;] -- BTW pretty easy to read even for newbies like me -- ). He wrote that:

"Systems containing internal inconsistencies, which are partially in conflict with reality and frequently based on purely and intentionally unrealistic assumptions and which come to absurd conclusions in extremes, are nonetheless successfully applied."

"It would appear that the system has its lifespan not due to its infallibility or logical consistency, but because the nonexistence of
a competing system."

And according to Tomas Sedlacek, economic systems or models are not the exception. Furthermore, he wrote, paraphrasing someone else, that "models and their assumptions are unrealistic" ...

(well my opinion still divided in here, but let me continue ....)

So, let me tell you what I know about scientific models, (at least empirical software models) they are created upon some evidence, and yes indeed most of the times "assumptions" need to be made in order to build a model to describe certain phenomena. Of course some particular cases would not follow the model. That is the reason models in science take years, sometimes even decades, to mature and put them into practice. And of course a model would properly work only under the same circumstances it was built in. When something has changed, the model can be either patched or re-invented depending on how drastic was the change.

On the other hand, we have the chaos theory (this is the reason my opinion is divided). I am sure all you have heard of the famous butterfly effect, which was observed precisely when a weather prediction model was rerun with exactly the same initial conditions for a second time, just that this second time
one of the initial conditions had a very very small difference, almost insignificant, and despite its insignificance made the model forecast a very different weather. So this discovery proved that a very well defined system model can become unpredictable.

So either way, none-chaotic or chaotic, I wonder what do economists have done ... because for sure our society has changed and our natural world has too ... How old are our economic models? In which circumstances they were created? Our current economic models have changed too? To which extent? Or they have just been only patched? (or not even that?) ... It would not be the time of stop patching the wheel and re-invent it instead?

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Today's illustration: Plato's Cave


Image Taken from [here]