The Monster Inside You

The difference between the modern world and medieval age is this:

If you like to feel that you are fighting a monster,

you can turn on a game console or a computer and play a game.

It is widely known that these monsters in computer games are not real.

In the medieval age, people in general, ordinary people like you and me,

thought many such monsters were real, running around in the real world.

Sometimes I appreciate how foolish and stupid we are by default.

I can imagine myself growing up in the medieval world with such supersticions.

If you think about yourself that you never possibly could believe in such things,

let me give an example of another kind of supersticion,

to illustrate how wrong you can be about yourself:

There is a kind monster many people believe in the modern world.

A monster that lives inside you and one day will wake up and make you go insane.

It seems so plausible when you look at all the evil and stupid things people do.

However, the fact that these evil and stupid people are ordinary people really blows my mind.

From doing psychological experiments with humans in many years,

scientist have learned a lot about the mechanism that causes us to do stupid things.

It has its roots in what makes us behave "normal" or "rational".

With other words, what causes you to be "normal" in one situation

may cause you to be "insane" in another situation.

These mechanisms, combined with powerful influence of the situation we are in,

causes the wrong judgements and emotions that leads to negative consequences.

We do not like to be associated with "the wrong people".

As soon as someone is suspected for a crime,

people stop talking about them as if they knew them personally.

It is easy to blame it on some flaw of that person's personality.

The truth is, we usually do not know why people behave as they do.

We can observe what people do, but understanding "why" is nearly incomprehensible.

The first reason is because we are used to see the world from the position we are in.

The second reason is the human brain is the most complex thing ever observed.

We can learn something by trying to understand other intelligent species.

For example, do orcas (killer whales) feel the same way we do about killing other animals?

These animals are famous for eating baby seals from beaches like cookies from a jar.

In one documentary, I saw one orca push a baby seal gently back on the beach instead of eating it.

David Attenborough said in that movie something like "good and evil is the product of the human mind".

It is easy for us to project our emotions and look at the orca pushing back the baby seal as "an act of mercy".

The correct answer is "we do not know".

You can not know anything for sure without doing experiments or mathematical proofs.

One day, science will figure it out.

We often feel sure about something and when we take this feeling as evidence,

we behave "normal" in the situations we have experience,

but in the situations we do not have experience it is a stupid thing to rely on feelings.

Only because you can not think of another reason, is no reason to think you are correct.

There is a reason why physics do not describe the laws of the universe in terms of emotions.

Most of the universe is very different from what you and I see.

We use mathematics for this work, which is an excellent tool.

Hard to use, but the best tool for the job!

In everyday experiences your feelings are more productive and descriptive than mathematics.

However, be aware of the edges you cross from "experienced" to "inexperienced".

It is true that a few people are batshit insane,

but most of the harm is not coming from them.

When people have a reason to be suspicious about you,

it is easy to understand why.

If you ever get in a bad light from a group of people,

you will be delivered the complete spectrum of logical contradictions.

You will also discover that people attack you as a person,

as if there was a monster inside you had woken up that needs to be killed.

When you look at what people say as a whole,

it gets pretty clear that many of them have to be wrong.

Seen from the individual standpoint, each person is sure about their view.

How can ordinary people be sure about something wrong?

The answer is simple: We are mostly wrong by default (see my previous article of Havoc's pool).

Does it stop there? No.

The reason we are wrong has little to do with the reasons we think by default.

This means when we discover ourselves doing the wrong thing

we often are incapable of correcting them because we do not know why we did it.

Have you ever tried "fixing" something and only making it worse? Me too!

We do not understand ourselves to any significant degree!

There is no "monster" living inside you.

The monster is created on the spot under influence by the situation you are in.

Want to change yourself?

Put yourself in another situation, like those of other people.