Dealing with Discontent - Take a vacation.

This is my second blog on the topic of “Dealing with Discontentment”.

I will start off with a quote. “If you want to untie a knot, you must know how you tied it in the first place”. The question that arises is how does one end up being so discontent in the first place?

One thing that becomes a bit more obvious as I think about this is that I have at many times made choices and never bothered to check if they were making me happy. The first choice makes me mildly unhappy. The second one makes is a bit worse and so on. It becomes increasingly obvious that one’s discontent is in a large part a consequence of not making the choices that could have made a difference. In general, we tend to ignore things till they become very big. The problem is that the cost of change is now much higher than it would have been a few years ago. The cost complication makes you persist with bad choices even when it is so obvious that this is a price that has to be paid if you ever want to be happy. The knot is most likely tied when one refuses to make the choices required to achieve happiness.

If you are indeed so unhappy with your job the obvious solution is to make some changes. How can you ever expect to be happy if you do not change? Often I find myself thinking that some miracle will happen and I will somehow find a way to be happy. Regrettably that has not happened to date. I’m wondering if it ever will.

The miracle is actually too easy to actualize. All one needs to do is to stop being complacent and initiate some change in his/her job. Most discontent people will agree that just about any change would make a difference. Most people don’t make any. I have not. It is almost as if one has a compulsive need to be miserable. Is it possible that people who feel miserable will make choices that only compound their misery?

There is a school of thought amongst people who think and reason out why societies and cultures are the way they are that tries to establish similarities between “genes” and how they ensure their own survival and thoughts (also called memes) and how these ensure their own survival. It has been postulated that thoughts that fit in with others that already exist in your mind are more likely to “survive” and find acceptability than the ones that do not fit in. One suggestion that is offered to people who are unhappy with their jobs is to go on vacation. Many people have found that taking a break helps to “clear” their mind enabling them to make the choices that result in increased satisfaction. It is possible that vacations or breaks replace “ideas” and “thoughts” in the mind with others resulting in some choices which were not “suitable” while on the job more acceptable to the mind.

Is it possible that miserable people are a victim of neuro-chemical crap that prevents them from making the changes required? Maybe your mind is super saturated with “misery” chemicals which dilute anything that could results in “satisfaction”.

Is it possible that “discontent” people can find themselves more likely to make the changes required to find “satisfaction” if they take a break from their “jobs”? Is all you need a vacation? Are you perpetuating your discontent by not creating a situation where meaningful changes become acceptable to you?

Dealing with Discontentment.

I happened to read through Ramanujam's blog on the topic of "Discontentment in Gen-X". He does touch upon something that has concerned a great many of us. It is indeed very true that many of us find ourselves totally discontented so early in our lives. I will also happily admit that I happen to be one of those "Discontent" member of Gen-X. I will go a little further to say that "Discontent" is just the start of the process. Some of us are "Disillusioned". Why might that be and what can one do about it.

The word "Discontentment", after I spent some time thinking about it, lays it out very well. We have "filled" our lives up with all the things that we don't need but we thought we did. The "contents" of our "lives" are not the things that bring us happiness. As Ramanujam urges people do need to change the contents of their lives. While this might sound rather easy to do, it is in actuality a very hard thing to do.

It is very important to think about yourself in good detail before you choose how you want to change your life. One thing that I've realized is that at some point in the past, I did choose all the things to fill my life with all the things I have now. I did go wrong once. Actually I went wrong multiple times. I did make some changes which again did not have the desired effect. So, if you think that just changing a few things around is going to make a difference, you are wrong. You will eventually reach the point of "Disillusionment". Before you go any further, ask yourselves if you are just "Discontent" or "Disillusioned". I think it is very important to fail multiple times and actually reach the point of being "Disillusioned". Any changes you make to your life before that are very likely to be poorly thought through.

Here is what I've learned after what appears to be a lifetime of discontent and disillusionment. All choices you make are wrong and are doomed to fail. The problem is that one tends to put the cart before the horse in this situation. I can never pick today what will make me"content" tomorrow simply because when tomorrow comes I'm not the person who picked. How can I know what will make me happy tomorrow? The most I can do is guess. Such an approach relies on my guess being accurate. I have to face the reality that I'm too complicated a person to be predictable. For starters, I'm not a linear system. My reactions to situations are very variable. For instance, how I laugh when I hear a joke is so unpredictable. I've at many times laughed out of control at some jokes and can barely manage a smile at other times. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that any approach that relies on me trying to predict my state in the future is likely to be widely off the mark. As Ramanujam suggests, one needs to shorten the "extrapolation" window and create "milestones" that are not far out in the future. Steve Jobs touches upon this topic rather eloquently in his "Commencement Address at Stanford" with his first story and points out that you actually cannot connect the dots forward. Take the argument to their logical conclusion and you will realize that the only solution to the problem is to be "content" now.

That's not easy. It will probably take you a lot of work to get there. You can start by trying to set yourselves a goal to reach everyday. Start your day off with a simple plan that you will be content if you achieve this today. Continue this process for a while till your mind is conditioned to accept "contentment" based on daily goals. Most of us are so used to thinking so far into the future that being "content" on a moment to moment basis is way too big a leap. I could not help noticing that my baby (only 8 months old) appears to not care for anything beyond the immediate present. I say that just to point out that all of us did have this ability which we have over years lost. It is certainly going to be a challenge to undo years of "conditioning" that has resulted in us being the way we are. I think a lot of patience and efforts will be required.

I also want to add that I cannot say with any certainity that such an approach will work. I don't know that yet. I just happen to want to share my thoughts on the topic. I am by no stretch of imagination an expert here. This blog in any case sounds quite preachy. Please don't take it too seriously. Give it some thought.

The Human Head Shake.

Man is a social animal. One expects society to influence human behavior. One might expect people from different societies to behave differently. One behavioral difference that I’ve noticed is that people from India tend to shake their head sideways when they do not agree with something and in expressing their disapproval of an event that they see transpiring. I’ve also observed that people of western origin shake their head back and forth in the same circumstances. Is there a reason why this difference exists? Here is one possible explanation.

Indian mothers feed their babies sitting on the floor, with their legs stretched out. The baby rests in the valley between the mothers leg and faces upwards. The object used to feed the baby which could be a spoon or the mother’s hand approaches the baby sideways. Quite often the baby needs to indicate to the mother that it does not want the food that it is being fed. Sometimes because the baby is just not ready for another mouthful and at other instances because the baby does not like the food. The baby in such a situation naturally expresses this by moving its head away from the feeding hand or spoon. Since the baby’s head rests on the mother’s legs, it is incapable of moving its head backwards. The baby moves its head sideways to communicate with the mother. This would condition the baby to move its head sideways to indicate no.

Western mothers, to the best of my knowledge, feed their babies on a high chair with the mother in front of the baby. The feeding hand or more likely the spoon approaches the baby from the front. The natural evasive action from the baby would be to move its head backwards and forwards. This would condition the baby to move its head backwards and forwards to indicate no.

It is quite likely that this behavior is carried into adult life and could actually also have been adopted by adults who observe this in their babies resulting in a “culture” which shakes the head sideways in one set of people and back and forth in others. Most languages use some form of “ma” and “pa” for the words that mean mother and father since babies appear to make these sounds much before other sounds.

I advance this “explanation” based on my observation of my daughter and what I know of western culture. It would be interesting to see if this is indeed true.

A complexity argument against creationism.

I find it rather odd that human beings in the 21st century continue to believe that life is created by a “creator”. I find it even odder that an “argument” as lame as “Intelligent Design” is being touted as a theory worthy of being considered an “alternative” to the rather wonderful “Theory of Evolution” Charles Darwin presented to us about 150 years ago.

The “Intelligent Design Theory” suffers from a simple fallacy that it uses the extreme improbability of the complexities that exist in life forms to increase the probability of a “creator” which is infinitely more complex than any known life. Richard Dawkins does a rather good job of exposing the inadequacies of this theory in his wonderfully readable creation “The God Delusion”. A lot of the modern day “evolutionists” have also pointed out that arguments justifying “creationism” tend to appear from “Gaps” in the knowledge of the process of evolution.

It occurred to me that both “theories” focus on the “qualitative” aspects of life. There is more to life on earth than that. It occurred to me that one should investigate if there are other such aspects where the differences in the two theories can be tested better. For example, could we evaluate the two theories in relation to the “quantitative” aspects of life? Does one theory fare much better than the other?

Once you ask that question, the answer is almost immediate. A “Creationist” view of life requires that a “creator” pick and choose which life exists. This would require that life progress linearly in quantity at a rate determined by the time a “creator” spends in performing an act of creation. The “Evolutionist” view provides life with an ability of increase exponentially in numbers. People familiar with the mathematics of complexity of algorithms would phrase this as “Creation is an algorithm with O (N) complexity while Evolution is an algorithm with O (log (N)) complexity”. Which of the two would stand a chance of justifying the enormous quantity of “life” that exists on earth?

Just how much life exists on earth anyway? For starters there are about 6,000,000,000 of us. There is the rest of the animal kingdom, plants, microbes…More than a million species of life have been identified. I would conservatively put the total number of living things on earth as a number to the order of 1e30.

How does “creationism” fare here? If a creator takes an atto-second (1e-18 seconds) to create one of them, the process would take 1e12 seconds or about 31710 years. I don’t think most of them live that long to make the process work. The smallest known living organism is about 400 nM in size. Light takes about 1e-15 seconds to pass through that. It is a generous concession on my part to postulate that each organism can be “created” in an atto-second.

How about “Evolution”? Clearly evolution allows for species to be created as a result of “genetic modifications” introduced in the process of “reproduction”. Reproduction gives life the ability to increase in quantity “exponentially”. Life can start in small quantities and increase dramatically fast in short time. You can start with a single cell that divides once in a day and reach a large number of cells like 1e30 in about 100 days. A single human egg fertilized with a single sperm through the process of cell division with “modifications” in the cells as appropriate creates a human being with all organs in place in about 9 months. Every one of us is a living example of the power of the process of “Descent with Modification” to result in enormous diversity in “qualitative” as well as “quantitative” aspects of life. Evolution does stand a chance of explaining the enormous quantity of life that exists on earth.

The conclusion you should be coming to is that not all life is “created”. It is still possible for the “Intelligent Design” theory to survive with a modification that some (if not all) speciation is a result of intervention from a “creator”.

I also recognize that a lot of “religious” people will take offense at the conclusions that I have drawn. I wish to say the following to them. I’ve very consciously avoided using the word “God” through the discussion above with the exception of where I’ve cited the title of Richard Dawkins’s book. I consider myself to be a deeply religious person. I’ve at multiple instances in my life been struck with awe with the benevolence that abounds in nature. I cannot but come to the conclusion that there is much that I’ve to be grateful for. “God” to me is the face I put on “benevolence”. I do visit places of worship (when I can) and find myself thanking “God” for all that I’ve been given. I do however find that “religion” reduces “God” to such pettiness that I’m unable to accept as a means to express one’s gratitude. I don’t understand why any human would deem it appropriate to require “God” to match his “Beliefs”. Would a “benevolent” “God” not deem is appropriate to let life be?