psychology

We have all heard of the left and the right wing political ideologies. We have a broad understanding of what is left and what is right. Left wing is generally liberal, emphasizes on equality, social justice and reform. Right wing on the other hand are more inclined towards free market, authority, tradition, duty, hierarchies and individual liberty. More generally, I think it is fair to say that the left wants big reforms in the current system and the right wants to maintain the current system....

If you follow politics, you might have noticed that politics dealing with “us vs them” works very well where the “them” is considered an enemy. The “us” and “them” could be based on religion, caste, language or any other such thing that comes to your mind. Why does it work this well? You might think that if a person belongs to a particular religion, they have deeply internalized their religious beliefs and if they come across any conflicting belief, they react in… not an ideal way, to say the least....

What does it mean to achieve freedom? When is a person free? Let’s break this down today. To understand what freedom is, let us first define freedom. Freedom is having autonomy to do whatever we wish. This is a very raw and broad definition of freedom. For some additional context, let’s define what is the opposite of freedom, or what does it mean to not be free? We could define it broadly as something controlling us; something hindering our autonomy....

All of us have heard statements like “love marriage is better than arranged marriage”, or “living in Europe is better than living in India”, or “X religion is better than Y religion”, or “science is better than religion” and vice versa. We also know a lot of people who strongly believe these statements. These are blanket statements. These are generalizations that people believe in. I have some thoughts on these....

In my old blog, “The dream you took for granted”, I gave an example of myself. I said that I am living the dream life of my 19-20 year old self, and yet, I don’t feel that great. Many people have a similar situation as mine. As a solution, I had mentioned that we should practice gratitude (check out the blog for more details). We should be thankful for everything that has went our way....

Imagine this, you are living in a time where slavery is very common, let’s say sometime between 15th to 17th century. You see that a lot of people believe that slaves are a different “species” of sorts and they deserve the treatment they are getting. You see that a lot of people treat slaves inhumanely. What do you think your reaction will be? Will you believe that there is nothing wrong with slavery?...

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....

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....

If you found the title strange, you are not alone. You might never have heard a person making such a claim. Nobody can be an atheist by birth. When a person grows up and starts understanding their environment, and starts observing the various religious practices, they begin to feel that there is something wrong here. They dig deeper and find out that so many things that religions claim are straight up rubbish....