Specialness

I was reading a post on The Dilbert Blog that made me think of how humans see themselves. Why do most people get offended when compared to animals? To me, the logical reason would be that comparing one to an animal insults that person's intelligence. But the fact remains that humans and animals are made of the same building blocks, both function in the same way, and both survived evolution. They can be looked at as two solutions to an equation, one being more complex than the other.

A dear friend once told me: "Most humans are similar in their uniqueness". I completely agree with that point. Almost every person would like to think of himself/herself as being special, unique, unpredictable, and simply different. The truth, sadly, is that this is wrong. I think our need to feel unique and special is, among other factors, what led to inventing the concepts of the spirit or the soul, intelligent design, god, religion, and many other concepts that if inspected by, for example, another species that's as intelligent as us but doesn't suffer the specialness complex would be understandably seen as nothing but delusions.

According to this article, falling in love activates the exact same system as taking cocaine. I will discuss this matter in further detail in a separate post, but isn't this enough proof of how unreliable our emotions are?

Addendum to "Families"

It has been brought to my attention by many who read my post on families that the post is unclear, quite aggressive, and could send out the wrong message to people. It is in light of these comments that I decided to write this extra explanation.

Most people who read the post (and don't know me personally) assumed I had a very bad family, and that I was writing out of a terrible personal experience. That is a totally wrong assumption. What I merely did was take a step back and look at the general picture. Just because a certain concept or a group of concepts doesn't apply to a minority doesn't mean that it's wrong. The problem is that people are usually tempted to look at the matter from a very personal perspective, while in fact it is anything but personal. Once you realize the fact that parents are humans and hence, are as imperfect, as susceptible to over-attachment, and as vulnerable to emotions as anyone else, you'll begin to see the perspective from which I am discussing the issue.

In the original post, I deliberately used exaggerated extremes in an attempt to give those who read it a full account of the extent to which our concepts about families can be wrong (Somewhat similar to when people say "Smoking kills"). It is then up to the reader to choose what matches the specific condition he/she is in, or that with which he/she comes in contact. In case that concept was not apparent or was understood in the wrong way, I hope this little elaboration clears it up....

Fools

Bubbles

One particularly interesting characteristic I found in humans is their need to understand their surroundings. We always try so desperately to find the general rule, to understand the reason and the purpose of things, and to understand other people. I believe this need is so urgent that each one of us is forced to create a bubble around him/herself. A bubble which, to that person, is the whole world and in which he/she understands everything. Naturally, as we grow and get exposed to a much higher diversity of people and ideas, our bubble grows with us, we understand more, whether through learning or experience.

Humans are, understandably, very protective of their bubbles. Once we believe in something, we don't tend to change it easily. However, what I can't understand is how can a person truly believe he/she has sufficient knowledge not to seek any more? How can one wrap him/herself with a bubble, seal it, and then judge people accordingly? Two of the biggest examples on this subject are: religious intolerance, and the generation gap. Needless to say, these two issues are the cause of many troubles that plague our world, and sadly, the ideology that leads to them is being passed on as valuable heritage from generation to the next, making it increasingly harder to break the circle....