Pages

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Explaining Emotional Detachment

Not long ago, I took a simple Online Test that concluded that my personality type is INTJ. Subsequent introspection, besides confirming that I almost perfectly fit that stereotype (which was disappointing in itself since my emotional side would have preferred to believe that I was somehow special or unique), also led me to explore the consequences of the realization that I will eventually but inevitably no longer be who I am right now.

And that means that every thing I value right now, it may all be just a phase that I am going through. It may all be just a matter of time before I find flaws in the reasoning behind everything that I believe in. And if I don't, that doesn't necessarily mean that there are none. Now, it would have been a reasonable assumption that smarter men and women than I have struggled with the same problems and (factoring in the substantially more time and life experience they have had to think about this than I) would have proceeded beyond this point. But having explored the available answers to the philosophical questions that I obsess over, I already knew that none of the existing ones satisfy me.

In my last blog post, I tried to tackle the question of the purpose of existence and the depressing answer was that there is none ... all we can do is give ourselves something to strive for based on our arbitrary principles which in turn are based on the arbitrary experiences that we have had, coupled with arbitrary genetic factors. But what now? The human mind is fundamentally inconsistent entity with a constant struggle between emotions and the intellect. The key to happiness, as my mom explains the essence of books she reads on spirituality, is to be at peace with this dichotomy and accept reality as it is. However, given my fundamental distrust of emotions, it is currently impossible for me to be a neutral observer in this matter.

What is it about emotions that makes me so wary? For starters, they are primitive and their origins simplistic, which means that they can be manipulated. Aside from that being exactly what self-control entails, it also means that one is susceptible to external control, which may or may not be desirable. I suppose this next point is characteristic of youth, but even after knowing that emotions ultimately can be restrained, it isn't that easy to do so. But most of all, they can result in phenomenal inefficiency by making short-term gains appealing.

Now, I am aware that the question of whether or not a course of action results in a short-term or long-term gain (if at all) can only be evaluated within the context of a greater objective, the latter being is something that pure intellect cannot provide. All it can do is to help achieve it by making better decisions at each step along the way. But the "will to live" is an emotional response to the prospect of death, that has evolved from millions of years of accumulated evolution (and justifying existence using meaningless sentiments like "life is beautiful" and "there is so much to experience" is being dishonest with yourself). It is the combination of these factors that have resulted in the success of our race in terms of population and survival. So now we have an alternative solution to achieve happiness: find a balance between intellect and emotion.

The pursuit of happiness itself (as a consequence of its correlation with survival) is the result of similar evolutionary processes. But evolution has not resulted in us wanting to selfishly maximize our own happiness ... we do have empathy since it enhances overall survival probability. However, most of us are flawed since our sympathies are restricted at most only to a small set of surrounding people ... only those whom we have physically interacted with. The emotional aspect of our mind is far too primitive to grasp the abstraction of an unseen world, justifiable due to (in evolutionary terms) the recentness of long distance travel and subsequent globalization. But the question that haunts me is this: isn't the next logical step obvious?

Now, I know that most of the people in the world are good. Or at least, they try to be. But at the end of the day, it is the minority of the ones that aren't that are responsible for screwing it up. If not directly, then by creating possibly self-perpetuating systems that the nicer people have no choice but to be a part of. And it isn't that I am incapable of understanding their motivations ... the problem is that this is how it is going to continue to be. And while the logical part of my mind justifies its contempt for the ideas, the primitive emotional part is incapable of not transferring the sentiment over to the representatives thereof.

I have come to believe that as long as humanity has the level of emotional freedom that it does now, true progress will not be possible. Consider a world where people have been reprogrammed using technology to be incapable of performing any immoral action to the best of their understanding, the aim being the maximization of justice and happiness. A world where military forces are obsolete, where all software can be open-source, where verbal agreements are just as good as written contracts, where people do their jobs to the best of their ability, where they do not consume more resources than they need, where there is no private ownership that can create divides, and when something undesirable is unavoidable, the burden shared fairly. And now that you have imagined all this, understand that all it takes is a single person like ourselves who will inevitably bring it all crashing down. This is why the Communism failed ... people cannot be trusted. All it takes is need, opportunity and the ability to rationalize one's behavior.

While I know that the aforementioned future is an impossibility and that the just-world hypothesis is indeed a fallacy, I have not yet been able to overcome wishing that this were not the case. There is a frustration due to the inability coupled with unwillingness to do anything about this, consequent upon the awareness of the lack of skills required, in addition to the emotional bias that "they don't deserve it". Faced with constant hypocrisy, all I seem to want to do is to limit my attention to those parts of the world that do make sense, which could also be expressed as the rejection of the rest of the world. Pathetic, isn't it? Acceptance seems attainable only after (and it shouldn't be long now) my idealism has been completely shattered.

I am at a point where not only do I experience emotions, but in addition to simultaneously perceiving that at this very instant I am experiencing them, I also recognize exactly what triggered them. But the truly irritating part is that even after knowing all this, I still have a hard time regulating them. And the thought of the time being wasted in the effort itself doesn't help the matter. The solutions frequently suggested for this issue are "not to think about it" or "it will get better with time", and while that is how I continue to function, I cannot help but interpret these solutions are avoidance and desensitization, instead of actually trying to fix the problem.

I don't know what to think, but as I write this, I am not angry, bitter, or morose. I know that it is futile. What I am is tired. And all I want is peace.

PS : Thanks to Shreyas Pathak, for helping figure out some of the above ideas.

1 comment:

okefagerstrom said...

Online Slots in Canada - Casino Review
Online slot machines are a big part 바카라 시스템 배팅 of the 188bet Vegas gambling culture 돌겠네 진짜 The 네온 벳 main reason why these are some 재제 of the top-rated slot machines in Canada is