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Showing posts from June, 2021

Coercion, Misery

I believe a lot of psychological misery in this world is due to coercion. Coercion by society, culture, gender, evolutionary forces and the most dangerous of them all - self-coercion (which is needed anyway for the other coercive forces to have their effect). There is also one, perhaps bigger, sense in which coercion is wrong - it is authoritarian and stops the growth of knowledge. But let's focus on misery for now. Coercion happens when people pick an idea, and write it in stone. All ideas it is in conflict with are just ignored. And then they want this idea to materialize. And they attach their wellbeing to it materializing. The reasons for this could be any number of things - from "it is the right thing to do i.e. morality", to "it will make me happy" to "it will make my life meaningful" etc. The idea is so strongly entrenched (it's written in stone after all), that feedback (from things like one own state of mind) is typically closed off. The i...

Ode to peanut butter

  When life seems rough You smoothen the groove When the going gets tough You help me crunch through When stuck in myriad ruts You say - here, go a bit nuts Rain or shine..our bond is such Oh peanut butter, I love you so much