Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings?
For the majority of us, it’s other people – society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didn’t want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasn’t such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue – mostly through mutual peer pressure – to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde
It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this.
Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug – we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can.
We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because we’re worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up – they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom – the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power – you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you.
The truth is that it’s all an illusion anyway – you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, they’re thinking about themselves ‘morning, noon and after dinner,’ as Carnegie wrote.
If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think there’s only one way – make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.
This doesn’t mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them. Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know what’s right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values – not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful.
Only one question remains – do you really want to be free?
About the author: You can download Michael Miles’ new book, Thirty Days to Change Your Life, for free, from http://effortlessabundance.com
Read more at http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/why-you-shouldnt-care-what-others-think-about-you/#LIM6p8d4vYsZyqDw.99
BBC - Future - Climate change: Could we engineer greener humans?
In the far future, might we consider changing human biology to avoid the worst effects of climate change? Frank Swain explores an intriguing thought experiment.
Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing humankind, and as the stakes are raised, many are proposing ambitious solutions – from pumping dust into the atmosphere to escaping to space.
But what if instead of trying to fix the world, we fixed ourselves? That’s the question posed by Matthew Liao, director of the Bioethics Programme at New York University, and his colleagues. “We tried to think outside the box,” says Liao. “What hasn’t been suggested with respect to addressing climate change?”
The answer they landed on is human engineering: the biomedical modification of human beings to reduce their impact on the environment. The associate professor suggests that by changing our underlying biology – altering our size or diet, for instance – we could create greener humans.
While these researchers are not seriously proposing that we embark on a worldwide programme of invasively modifying human beings, it serves as an interesting thought experiment that could offer a new perspective on the impact we each have on the planet. “We’re not suggesting that we should mandate these ideas, but it would be good to make them options for people,” says Liao.
It wouldn’t be the first time that biological control has been used to limit the ecological impact of a society. China’s controversial ‘one-child’ policy was implemented in 1979 to alleviate pressures on the environment, among other reasons. And the tiny Pacific island of Tikopia was made famous by anthropologist Raymond Firth in 1936 when he reported that its inhabitants followed a strict code of birth control to prevent the population straining the island’s limited resources. Undesirable as these efforts may sound to some ears today, Liao suggests that we could go further in the quest to be more environmentally-friendly humans.
China's 'one child' policy was a form of human engineering.
One strategy would be to reduce our resource use. “18% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock farming, so if we ate less meat we could greatly reduce our environmental impact,” explains Liao. But although most people understand that eating meat is not environmentally friendly, the sight of a juicy steak sizzling on the grill is often too tempting to refuse. But what if we could engineer people to dislike the taste of burgers?
“We can artificially induce intolerance to red meat by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins,” he says. Liao envisions a medical aid like a nicotine patch that makes you sick if you try to eat red meat. Such a patch might sound like science fiction – and for now it is – but evidence has recently surfaced that people bitten by the lone star tick, native to the southern US, subsequently developed allergies to red meat, forcibly pushing them toward a vegetarian lifestyle.
If we all stopped eating meat, carbon dioxide emissions would drop significantly (Thinkstock)
Liao also argues that we can reduce the size of our environmental footprint by reducing the size of our physical footprint. “Reducing height by 15cm would mean a reduction in mass of around 25%,” says Liao. That’s a quarter less of you that has to be transported, fed, and watered. Although there’s a social stigma against being short, Liao counters that there are benefits too. Smaller people tend to live longer he says, “and you can fit in airplanes better!”
Once you start down this path, it can take you as far as your imagination will go. What if human eyes could be modified to see better in dim light, reducing lighting bills? Could we cover our skin in chlorophyll for an energetic boost from the sun? Enter hibernation in the winter instead of burning coal to heat our homes?
Smaller humans would have less impact on the planet (Getty Images)
In fact, a few artists have already begun to dreaming up ways that human engineering could be taken to its very extreme. If you had the ability to reduce people’s height, for example, why not go much smaller? In 2013, artist Arne Hendricks argued that the ideal human height would be 50cm – standing no higher than a chicken – in order to minimise our impact on the environment. Firmly tongue in cheek, the idea won the Future Concepts category at the Dutch Design Awards, perhaps fitting given the country’s reputation for having both the tallest people on Earth and a stark vulnerability to rising sea levels.
And Japanese artist Ai Hasegawa has proposed an entirely different way to protect the environment: she has suggested that women might one day decide to become a surrogate parent for rare species, such as sharks, dolphin, or pandas.
Engineered species
Clearly, many of these bizarre ideas are not going to be adopted any time soon (or indeed, ever), but it’s certainly intriguing to speculate. Liao argues that, in some respects, human engineering is already happening. Many are opting to have our bodies changed, just for different reasons – to make themselves look more attractive via plastic surgery, for instance.
“A lot of the things we’re talking about are already being done in society, it’s not as extreme as we think. Though these things aren’t being done in the context of climate change. I think if you gave people that option, some will be willing to take it.”
Perhaps our descendants who are living with the worst effects of climate change might be more willing to embrace the idea of modifying our biology. It might prove easier than trying to modify the climate.
By Frank Swain
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140716-the-most-extreme-way-to-be-green
Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing humankind, and as the stakes are raised, many are proposing ambitious solutions – from pumping dust into the atmosphere to escaping to space.
But what if instead of trying to fix the world, we fixed ourselves? That’s the question posed by Matthew Liao, director of the Bioethics Programme at New York University, and his colleagues. “We tried to think outside the box,” says Liao. “What hasn’t been suggested with respect to addressing climate change?”
The answer they landed on is human engineering: the biomedical modification of human beings to reduce their impact on the environment. The associate professor suggests that by changing our underlying biology – altering our size or diet, for instance – we could create greener humans.
While these researchers are not seriously proposing that we embark on a worldwide programme of invasively modifying human beings, it serves as an interesting thought experiment that could offer a new perspective on the impact we each have on the planet. “We’re not suggesting that we should mandate these ideas, but it would be good to make them options for people,” says Liao.
It wouldn’t be the first time that biological control has been used to limit the ecological impact of a society. China’s controversial ‘one-child’ policy was implemented in 1979 to alleviate pressures on the environment, among other reasons. And the tiny Pacific island of Tikopia was made famous by anthropologist Raymond Firth in 1936 when he reported that its inhabitants followed a strict code of birth control to prevent the population straining the island’s limited resources. Undesirable as these efforts may sound to some ears today, Liao suggests that we could go further in the quest to be more environmentally-friendly humans.
China's 'one child' policy was a form of human engineering.
One strategy would be to reduce our resource use. “18% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock farming, so if we ate less meat we could greatly reduce our environmental impact,” explains Liao. But although most people understand that eating meat is not environmentally friendly, the sight of a juicy steak sizzling on the grill is often too tempting to refuse. But what if we could engineer people to dislike the taste of burgers?
“We can artificially induce intolerance to red meat by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins,” he says. Liao envisions a medical aid like a nicotine patch that makes you sick if you try to eat red meat. Such a patch might sound like science fiction – and for now it is – but evidence has recently surfaced that people bitten by the lone star tick, native to the southern US, subsequently developed allergies to red meat, forcibly pushing them toward a vegetarian lifestyle.
If we all stopped eating meat, carbon dioxide emissions would drop significantly (Thinkstock)
Liao also argues that we can reduce the size of our environmental footprint by reducing the size of our physical footprint. “Reducing height by 15cm would mean a reduction in mass of around 25%,” says Liao. That’s a quarter less of you that has to be transported, fed, and watered. Although there’s a social stigma against being short, Liao counters that there are benefits too. Smaller people tend to live longer he says, “and you can fit in airplanes better!”
Once you start down this path, it can take you as far as your imagination will go. What if human eyes could be modified to see better in dim light, reducing lighting bills? Could we cover our skin in chlorophyll for an energetic boost from the sun? Enter hibernation in the winter instead of burning coal to heat our homes?
Smaller humans would have less impact on the planet (Getty Images)
In fact, a few artists have already begun to dreaming up ways that human engineering could be taken to its very extreme. If you had the ability to reduce people’s height, for example, why not go much smaller? In 2013, artist Arne Hendricks argued that the ideal human height would be 50cm – standing no higher than a chicken – in order to minimise our impact on the environment. Firmly tongue in cheek, the idea won the Future Concepts category at the Dutch Design Awards, perhaps fitting given the country’s reputation for having both the tallest people on Earth and a stark vulnerability to rising sea levels.
And Japanese artist Ai Hasegawa has proposed an entirely different way to protect the environment: she has suggested that women might one day decide to become a surrogate parent for rare species, such as sharks, dolphin, or pandas.
Engineered species
Clearly, many of these bizarre ideas are not going to be adopted any time soon (or indeed, ever), but it’s certainly intriguing to speculate. Liao argues that, in some respects, human engineering is already happening. Many are opting to have our bodies changed, just for different reasons – to make themselves look more attractive via plastic surgery, for instance.
“A lot of the things we’re talking about are already being done in society, it’s not as extreme as we think. Though these things aren’t being done in the context of climate change. I think if you gave people that option, some will be willing to take it.”
Perhaps our descendants who are living with the worst effects of climate change might be more willing to embrace the idea of modifying our biology. It might prove easier than trying to modify the climate.
By Frank Swain
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140716-the-most-extreme-way-to-be-green
Human dystopia
A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia,[1] kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is a community or society that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utopia. Such societies appear in many artistic works, particularly in stories set in a future. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization,[2] totalitarian governments, environmental disaster,[3] or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, and/or technology, which if unaddressed could potentially lead to such a dystopia-like condition.
Famous depictions of dystopian societies include R.U.R. (which introduced the concept of Robots and the word Robot for the first time)[4]; Nineteen Eighty-Four, which takes place in a totalitarian invasive super state; Brave New World, where the human population is placed under a caste of psychological allocation; Fahrenheit 451, where the state burns books in response to the apathy and disinterest by the general public; A Clockwork Orange, where the state undertakes to reform violent youths; Blade Runner in which genetically engineered replicants infiltrate society and must be hunted down before they injure humans; The Hunger Games, in which the government controls its people by maintaining a constant state of fear through forcing randomly selected children to participate in an annual fight to the death; Logan's Run, in which both population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by requiring the death of everyone reaching a particular age; Soylent Green, where society suffers from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and a hot climate. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green"; and Divergent, where people must fit into one of five factions based on character traits: Selflessness, Bravery, Intelligence, Honesty, and Peace. Those people who possess more than one quality are hunted down for fear that they will not conform.
Interactions between humans and scavengers have been decisive in human evolution -- ScienceDaily
Interactions between humans and scavengers have been decisive in human evolution -- ScienceDaily
international team of researchers led by scientists at the University Miguel Hernández in Elche (Spain) has concluded that the interactions that human have kept for millennia with scavengers like vultures, hyenas and lions, have been crucial in the evolution and welfare of humankind. Furthermore, the results of the study note that the extinction of large carnivorous mammals threatens to wipe out the many services that they provide us. This finding has been published in the journal BioScienceand has numerous implications in the cognitive, ecological and cultural identity of modern man.
The study led by researchers Marcos Moleón and José Antonio Sánchez Zapata from the Area of Ecology -- Department of Applied Biology at the University Miguel Hernández is based on a review of recent arguments that have been published in scientific journals and offers a unique perspective of human evolution, from the origin of the first hominid about two million years ago, to the emergence and development of modern man.
"The way that humans have acquired meat since it became a fundamental component of our diet has changed from the consumption of dead animals to hunting live ones, the domestication of wild animals and finally intensive exploitation," the researchers explain. "In each of these periods, humans have been closely related to other scavengers. At first, the interaction was primarily competitive, but when humans went from eating carrion to generating it, scavengers highly benefited from the relationship. Today humans benefit the most from the multiple services provided by scavengers."
However, the study concludes that "the current process of extinction and depletion of vultures and large carnivorous mammals in large regions of the planet seriously threaten these services. Therefore, the continuity of these scavengers among us is not only important for maintaining the planet's biodiversity but also for our own wellbeing and our ecological and evolutionary identity."
The human implications of the ancestral and changing relationship between humans and scavengers are manifold. According to the researchers, the study shows that "the benefits to humans range from the provision of food, as carrion was more easily found if other scavengers were feeding from it, to the control of infectious diseases (due to the elimination of animal remains in the vicinity of human settlements); also through the catalysis of cultural diversity for example as we had to improve the early stone tools to be competitively successful."
Furthermore, this work indicates that "the two most distinctive human attributes, language development and cooperative partnership, were probably the result of selective pressures associated with consumption of carrion."
David Gray - Let the truth sting
The hour is out of joint
Black sun has risen
And the river of words
Is flowing on through
The cages of tradition
And they're handing out emptiness
We'll take it cos it's given
Free with this plastic innocence
And these standards of living
Questions lighted questions
Burnin' holes into my head
Hanging like shadows o'er the sun
Staring out like the eyes of the dead
And sometimes my soul flickers
When the wind of change blows cold
Over the mire of repetition
Down the corridors of rigmarole
What I say, what I think
What I put down in ink
I'm only trying to find a way to understand
And I mean no harm
I'm just searching for calm
In the storm of mankind
Do you find it there
In the sea of faces
That drowns you everyday
Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces
Where children and rottweilers play
Is it buried in the praise
Given so cheap
With a meaningless movement of the jaws
In the looking glass
That flatters you
Or in the rattle of hollow applause
Blind circle, moon and sun body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
From the hub to the limit
Through the urban hollows
Out into the poles of the extreme
To echo through the numbness
Of these godless minutes
In the shadow of delusion's regime
And here watching the night
As it opens like a flower
And the day starts to rust
Feeling time pound
Like a silent hammer
On this empire of dust
And I'm thinking bout the bullet
And the tv screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist
And if we're searching for peace
How come we still believe
In hatred as the catalyst
Oh through the borderline
In front and behind
One pain ending
While another begin
Lies, ruin disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sing
Yeah
Let the truth
And I feel it from the pit of my stomach
Into the ditch of my mind
Inside the chambers of my heart
As I stare half blind
At these walls of cardboard
At this space that I've rented
At your beauty that is crumbling
Though you try so hard to prevent it
On and on
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Black sun has risen
And the river of words
Is flowing on through
The cages of tradition
And they're handing out emptiness
We'll take it cos it's given
Free with this plastic innocence
And these standards of living
Questions lighted questions
Burnin' holes into my head
Hanging like shadows o'er the sun
Staring out like the eyes of the dead
And sometimes my soul flickers
When the wind of change blows cold
Over the mire of repetition
Down the corridors of rigmarole
What I say, what I think
What I put down in ink
I'm only trying to find a way to understand
And I mean no harm
I'm just searching for calm
In the storm of mankind
Do you find it there
In the sea of faces
That drowns you everyday
Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces
Where children and rottweilers play
Is it buried in the praise
Given so cheap
With a meaningless movement of the jaws
In the looking glass
That flatters you
Or in the rattle of hollow applause
Blind circle, moon and sun body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
From the hub to the limit
Through the urban hollows
Out into the poles of the extreme
To echo through the numbness
Of these godless minutes
In the shadow of delusion's regime
And here watching the night
As it opens like a flower
And the day starts to rust
Feeling time pound
Like a silent hammer
On this empire of dust
And I'm thinking bout the bullet
And the tv screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist
And if we're searching for peace
How come we still believe
In hatred as the catalyst
Oh through the borderline
In front and behind
One pain ending
While another begin
Lies, ruin disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sing
Yeah
Let the truth
And I feel it from the pit of my stomach
Into the ditch of my mind
Inside the chambers of my heart
As I stare half blind
At these walls of cardboard
At this space that I've rented
At your beauty that is crumbling
Though you try so hard to prevent it
On and on
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
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