Judgement is a skill that is very necessary to have in certain situations in life. Our judgements affect a lot of things in our life. There are three levels on which we judge people. As you might have already guessed from the title, they are - action, intent and context. In today’s blog, let’s explore how we use these incorrectly and how we should actually use them to correctly judge people (and ourselves). ...
I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong. -Bertrand Russell There are almost no certainties in life. Almost every conclusion we reach, every decision we make, every thought that occurs to us and every word we speak is a leap of faith to some extent. I can’t even say that the table that is in front of me right now exists or not. I may say that if I assume that there is a physical table present in front of me, then through my perception (i.e. my eyes, retina, and brain), or through the sense data that I receive, I see the brown colour of the table. The brown color of the table is a combination of the actual physical object (if there is any) and my senses and not the sole property of the actual physical object. So me saying that “the table exists” or “the table is brown in colour” are also leaps of faith. ...
The phrase “my life, my rules” has been very popular. People just randomly throw this phrase around these days. Let’s dissect this today. When somebody says “my life, my rules”, they usually mean, “I own myself, I can do whatever I want with myself”. This reaction is usually triggered when they are stopped from doing something, their freedom is hampered. For example, if an orthodox father tells his daughter to come back home early and not wear short clothes, this is the reaction the daughter will have. We can all see where this reaction comes from. The daughter feels that her father is restricting her and that she has the freedom to wear whatever she wants and go out with anyone she wants, she owns herself. ...
We all have heard quotes like “you should work hard and your life will become easier” at least a million times by now. But I haven’t always found this to be helpful. Working hard is important, there is no debating that. But I have a problem with how the whole self help industry, philosophers and motivational speakers portray it, and how we feel about it. This might be a little controversial. Allow me to explain. ...
With the election season in India over, I have a few thoughts. During this election, I observed a few things with myself as well as others. A few things about what kind of people we generally tend to follow, what kind of people influence us, why do we get influenced by the people we do. This election was all about people being either pro Modi or anti Modi. A few people said this is a dictatorship, a few people were completely in love with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mainstream media was either treating Modi like a God or a tyrant (I am including big youtubers in mainstream media, because nowadays they are). I observed a few interesting things with people who choose to follow one or the other. People are generally very stubborn in changing their beliefs. The people who view Modi as God won’t get convinced against their opinion no matter how much you try. Even clear facts and statistics won’t convince them against Narendra Modi. People who view him as a dictator have the same story. They always tend to agree with something that is in favour of their opinion and disagree with something that is against, no matter how valid the opposite arguments are or how dumb the supporting arguments are. This is called confirmation bias in psychology. ...