Entry Question: What should we be doing in life?

What I want to distinguish from this post is that there is a bad name attached to people listening to their feelings, somehow we use it to argue in some places and let it go in others. Where does this double standard come from? rather how is is justified.

Introduction

We know from the [solution in our head][siyh] that the solution to ‘what we need to do in life’ lies within us. It is futile to say that we need to blindly listen to someone who claims to have the solution to what we need to do in life. However the current solution in our head, that we have uncovered need not reflect what we need to do a 100%. It appears we need to uncover more of the solution by reasoning, which is also part of the solution. That is what we want to do, update the solution in our head? A few decades back we were discriminating based on the color of people, Women couldn’t vote, Gays were considered a Disease. But today life is much different. We have uncovered more of the solution by reasoning that they are nothing but people just like us who feel pain, sorrow, happiness. I am not saying there is no racism, no sexism, or the anti-gayism, but at least according to some large constitutions, this is not explicitly stated as WRONG. Some people might still like to hold on to those old conservative beliefs and we are not going to get into that now.

In one such attempt to uncover more of the solution inside our head we look at the following Essay?

Me and others

Me, I have access to more than basic resources such as food, water, shelter, healthcare etc. I live a comfortable life now, I do not need to work more than 8 hrs a day for five days a week. My parents, brother and all other cousins are well off. They have enough money to sustain themselves and beyond. I need to pay my parents back until I reach the sum of 40k euros. But that is no issue, as I see this money coming back to me at a later date from my parents. I happen to be born in one such environment where I had access to so many things, to develop myself, and reach now to a position where I can take care of myself. A lot of credit is due to the place where I was born, with parents who were hardworking and kept saving a lot of money for their kids. It was by luck, it happened that I was born in such a household in India.

Some people on the other hand are not so privileged as me. They don’t have access to basic commodities like food, shelter and clothing. Look at war-prone regions of Syria, Yemen and Iraq for example. The News is horrible, countries fighting their proxy wars in Syria and innocent civilians dying day after day. People are trying to flee their countries but are not being accepted in other countries. The state of affairs is plain sad. The story of their journey to other countries horrific. [Over half of the population is displaced][syria_pop], how are those people going to take care of themselves? They need to start a new life and find jobs and so on. At this point a number of people die trying to get to countries that will accept them, some are stuck at the borders and some manage to get into a country and begin their new life, without any struggles to live happily ever after NOT.

UNICEF reports 6.9 million children dying in the year of 2012. If you look at any aid-providing frontier such as MSF, Give Well and associated work, it is enough to give you tears. We see that reducing malaria related deaths, treating parasite infections, fighting malnutrition, saving small kids from deadly diseases for countries in sub-saharan Africa and Asia amongst others, providing relief in war-prone regions are prime actions as observed in their websites. Apart from this a scrolling through facebook over the years I have seen videos that are completely painful to watch. Rape of young children, child abuse, slavery (in Pakistan by brick lords) and animal abuse are all thriving. Science still having a long way to go with curing deadly diseases, old age sucks, people don’t have money to support themselves at such an age and health-care is being extremely pricy in many parts of the world. In the end its the helpless/poor people who are put the real test of surviving!

Amidst current dangers, there is the existential crisis as well, owing to Global warming, lack of sustainable generation of electricity, excessive pollution of land and water, generation of excessive plastics are only some of the other problems we need to tackle soon. Say the temperatures rises, the people who are not so privileged are going to have to just deal with it, while I can switch on an AC for example. Why? Because I can.

Most of the lucky people (including me) are doing nothing to alleviate the horrors faced by certain population of this world. People are busy in their own world, their own reality, buying gifts for their girl, or buying Cars, Iphones, IPads. People are buying houses after houses, bringing them down and up, almost to the point that they don’t know what to do with that money. They are making expensive trips to foreign countries spending shit loads on music festivals, booze, traveling and partying. Extravagant marriages and accompanied photoshoots are the new shizzz. I was recently at a few marriages, and I have reason to believe that it cost 18 lakh rupees (~12k euros) for one, and another one which might have cost a Crore (>100000 Euros). I have heard people (including myself) say, I earned the money, I deserve it, I deserve to splurge on insert the name of your favourite car, iphone, ipod, jewels, costly laptops, macs, clothes, shoes.

Peter Singer

In this video, Peter Singer a renowned Philosopher, starts with the tale of a young Chinese girl. Seemingly 5, a small girl walks on to the streets and was run over by a Van. A couple of people didn’t bother to check on her or even raise alarm. A second Van ran over her, after which a street cleaner raises alarm, but then it was too late. She died.

Peter asks his audience, “How many of you would have attempted to save her if you were in that similar situation?”. Almost all of the members raise their hands. That’s great right? Peter further adds, “I am sure all of you mean it, but don’t give a pat on your back, just yet. Unicef reports that 6.9 million children are dying every year.”

He asks, how does it matter if she is run by a van or dying silently not in front of your eyes, away from the media outlets you subscribe to. It doesn’t hurt for sure, but so what!

What is the right response ? Feelings value system conundrum

It is my understanding that the brain is like a computer and the sensory organs are the infra-red cameras and sensors, feeding data to the brain. The Brain wants to compute the next response, but in place of uncertainty and lack of computational tools it uses some design rules/H&B’s developed a long time ago(millions of years), but used in this day and age. Moving further, based on the cheap calculations performed by the brain, YOU are given the carrot and the stick to churn out an appropriate response. You are made to feel good or feel like shit, so that you know what you “want”. H&B’s allow the brain to make cheap computations, and then the brain decides to give me the carrot or the stick via feelings. I feel like shit or I feel good (simplistically speaking).

It seems like we all have certain driving forces built in. We fucking love sex, it pains us when we see someone dying or suffering and so on. Given a super-super computer, and the physics of the world and humans, it seems like it should be possible to predict what will happen 10 seconds from now. We have this value system (do not kill, help others, have sex, procreate, eat and so on), based on which the design rules/H&B’s are supposed to have been written, to enable cheap and quick computation. This manifests as Carrot and Stick Feelings. It seems to be clear these feelings are misfiring mightily, i.e., possibly not representative of the true value system. When I see the video that Peter Singer talks about, my heart bleeds, but when I hear that 6.9 million children are dying every year, I’m like Meh. Worse is I am able to perform my daily duties normally after say a few mins. I don’t feel like doing anything to alleviate the misery that is felt by several 100 million people. This is pretty much what happens everyday, when I see videos of people’s struggles. 3 Different responses to death of children and varying over 3 time instances, minutes apart. All I ask to Peter, which is the right response, and why is the first one the right response?

Which is the right response, what am I supposed to do? At this point I don’t even know my true value system. Assuming my feelings will guide me to my true value system seems to just be a joke as my H&B’s are streaming out different feelings at an alarming rate for the same issue. Different feelings for the same issue at different times.

Conclusion

Things that I can say now is that feelings coming from H&B’s are misrepresntative of what your value system truly wants you to do, assuming that your value system does not change.

Our H&B’s cannot be the final judges, which determines what actions need to be taken. This is clear. They are flawed. For example, one day you feel so bad for the Syrians, and almost the very next minute you are back to square one worrying about the beautiful Indian girl who passed by. It’s plain silly.

How do I fix this?

Coming up next:

Why should we go behind our value system? Why are you differentiating yourself from the brain. Aren’t you all the same? What other options do we have? Another approach to determining the true value system? (Peter singer’s essay)

[peter_wiki] [mvt]:/Map-vs-Territory.html [siyh]:/solution-inside-my-head.html [syria_pop]:http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/09/daily-chart-18