Lost

I have memories of times when I had almost nothing to remember whatsoever...

A few hazy instants of me being carried by my mother in a grocery store, in former Yugoslavia. I remember the completely empty shelves. The understanding that they are not being as they used to... There were things on them before. Father is talking to the owners. We wanted something.

Me sitting on the concrete of the Main Street in Bečej, watching as a lean rush of blood flows from my knee. Its warmth is surmounting the dull pain, its deep crimson mesmerizing me with the knowledge about a significant property of my flesh. My father smiling and saying the words that carry the meaning: "It happens, son. Does it hurt? No? Then let's clean You up and continue." Mother wiping the blood clean. The weather was hot, I was wearing shorts.

Grandfather, I called Him Deda, not bringing a toy with Him this time. I can't really recall His physical gifts as much as this incident when there was none but a piece of personality carving wisdom: "I couldn't. It can't happen every time. It's not a habit to receive gifts. A gift is an appreciation of the moment and the bond between the giver and receiver, it is not for itself." From then on I know that I am not alone in this world, that there are many people who relate with each other and that little toy birds and cars are mere objects to relate among people with.

Or when I was with my other grandparents... My grandpapa whom I called Tutu is driving the car and we are going uphill to Their mountain gardens, up with the old Škoda on an impossible, ninety-degree slope. It's a physically impossible thing, yet I remember it as clear as looking through a spotless window.

Most of these are fond memories from the first perspective, and seemingly distorted by the lack of comprehension of the worldly order, overlapping post-experiences and who knows what else. Back then I couldn't form memories as I do now since I was missing the necessary acquaintance of the human ways of knowing. Vice versa, I cannot be sure that I can understand those memories now since my mind was taking record of stimuli in a wilder manner than it does now.

Lately, I have decided to unravel more of my past than I cared to before. Understanding how we came to be by the events in our lives, or even those before our birth is a significant tool in unlocking our current reality. This is an impressive adventure on its own, and it also brings out the suppressed memories which were buried beneath the vigilant watch of the guardians called Fear & Shame.

Inverted Pyramid

Back when I spent a year of my life as a full-time volunteer, during our initial meeting in the organization I was working for, we – the volunteers – were entertained with a peculiar world view, which was given to us as an insight to how the organization works. This theory had no name, nor specific details. It was just a basic outline of a simple idea. I keep thinking about it since, and today I would like to share it with You. My version might have a bit more of an in-depth shape in order to deliver its message in a (hopefully) more applicable manner, but its main proposal remains the very same. I have given the concept the name "Inverted Pyramid", which task was not hard to achieve, as You will soon see. It is not to be confused with the metaphor used by journalists.

Before we get to it, I would like to share some background information on it. Mainly, the Inverted Pyramid is a theoretic socio-organizational structure and an outline for functional behavior. A structure such as this can benefit us greatly. Some of You have undoubtedly heard of many scientific works pointing to the increasing troubles we, as a collective, have. These troubles are among the most significant we have ever had, and their weight might just be superseding all poverty, wars and ruthlessness combined. On this blog, I already mentioned two scientific explorations of these dangers: the one about a modeling of societal collapse, and one which was a warning to humanity back in '92. I am now also drawing attention to a recent one, which reminds us about the necessity of bringing change to the paradigm of our worldwide system. This need is not a mere idealistic, new-age dream, as many people tend to write it off: we either do it or the society as we know it perishes anyway.

Instead of waking us up to our senses, all these mentioned forecasts are mostly bringing out the pessimists in us. I meet so many people who are at least vaguely aware of how deep we sunk in troubles, but I can count on one hand how many of them actually have a positive attitude towards our prospect. When I ask how we should proceed to successfully respond to these challenges, the answers I usually get go along the lines of "we ought to die anyway" or "there's nothing to be done". These defeatist views are not present because all people are inherently fatalistic. It is because we are not used to thinking far outside of our daily concerns and are bombarded with useless information all the time.

Superpersona

Experiments have the property of not having a certain outcome. For this reason, self-experimentation can sound disheartening. I decided to share my own psychological self-experiment; either for the convenience of You not actually having to do it, but still read about the so far progress, or to perhaps bravely try it out Yourself and see where it leads us.

Some of You might already know about the theory that describes how we humans wear behavioral masks for a variety of reasons, which we call personae. For the most part, we do this unconsciously, and I find that to be a shame. My reason for such logic is that, as with most things, if we are letting our psychical reality shape our behavior without our acknowledgment, our fate is less based on our supposed ability of having a choice. Therefore, I decided to coordinate my social roles, or to put it differently, I want to have a core sense for priorities to act upon. I'm sure that throughout history, certain people have already done things like this in Their own peculiar ways. By having an approach of my own which seems different enough from what I encountered so far, though, I consider this effort worth of its own theoretical framework.

The way I came to realize the divergence between my cognitive and behavioral patterns in different social contexts (including the secure feeling of being alone) was when I noticed my wishes changing from one minute to the other. Like at times not eating sugary foods made me a proud person who is pursuing a healthy lifestyle, just a few flickers later the same thought made me suffer and feel as if I'm depriving myself of the deserved pleasures of life. Or this other time when my aunt found me making weird sounds while I was browsing the internet. What made my brain pulsate with excitement was rendered into shame by a simple change of circumstance.

Dream Distillery: Africa, You Voodoo

I present another "series" on this blog. The one I already started is focused on clarifying principles from psychology. While this new one won't be outside of the mentioned scientific field, it is about exploring an area which I find to be missing a crucial angle of research. What I will be writing here are the re-imaginations and mash-ups of my most memorable dreams.

Oneirology, the scientific study of dreams, found many answers, definitions and ways to interpret dreams. Today we even have a machine that can record dreams. The way I see it, we are only accessing our nightly involvements from the waking world, from the outside. Far from that being bad practice in itself, it still misses a fundamental element: comprehending dreams for what they are, from within the dream side. Hardly could we call such an approach empirical by consensus, which is probably the reason behind the notable lack of this method.

These "dream semi-journals / short stories" won't be an attempt to unlock the secrets of the sleeping living. They will rather serve as expeditions into the intangible contents of my own symbolism, fur the sheer fun of it. The everyday common sense and logic may break under the conditions of my inspiration. These glances to a reality out of conventional time and space will have structural meanings of their own. Please, bear this in mind when reading. Comparing the inner rules to those of the external phenomena would, at best, be a philosophical effort. Instead, let's find out if we can leave our common sense behind for the sake of a different setup of reason.

This series of posts is labeled as Dream Distillery. Let me begin...

Dungeons & Daddy Issues

What happens in the dark? Not physically, but mentally. What monstrous realities do we imagine into the reflectionless moments of the world, like those of basements without electricity? In order to find out, let's add a couple of torches, and observe the whispers between the shadows. This is how every proper game of D&D should be played. That's how we used to do it, at least.

We did it hardcore: we used continuously refined house rules, went into endless negotiations with the DM in order to exercise the limits of possibilities that the multiverses of role-playing bring, listened to relevant ambient epic stoner, and quite often got lost between the boundaries of whatever is between our everyday personae and fantasy-flesh alter egos. (All this in a basement filled with dripping stalactites/stalagmites, of course.) Yes, we did it to pass the time and have fun. It's just a peculiar definition of fun. We did it to exercise our imagination and see how far we can go, when we bear the divine power of metamorphosis to take on roles of entities in worlds with yet undreamed qualities. How would we actually act if we could read minds? Or slit throats one after another in order to increase our reputation? If we lived among a gene pool of self-aware creatures so vast that with practically every adventure we could meet previously unseen races? What would our philosophy be; and which factually existing gods would we bow to? Would we decide against pursuing magic? And why?

As it turns out, leaving our own unconscious tendencies out of the picture is easier imagined than actually done. I had several characters throughout the years, of whom I'll mention the two I actually designed completely on my own. These characters lived, and they eventually died or went on quests to which our all-seeing powers had no interest in paying attention. When one of these two things happen, a player simply creates a new being to follow the rest of the adventuring party, who are destined to be played with by Their actual gods.

The Divine Projector

Do You have a pet? Observe it, Your real pet or the one You would prefer, in Your imagination. Don't do it only once, but for a while. Try to see It for what It is.

Since I was a kid, I was trying to unravel what is the gaze of non-human animals hiding when it's staring into our own. I have different theories about different species and individuals within species, and at least some of them, I believe, look at us in some kind of awe. We provide shelter, food, and constraint with conditioning techniques, leashes, bowls, cages, legal papers – not unlike how we sometimes act towards each other. If we humans are not aware of how most stimuli are affecting us, and we mostly shrug it off as faith, circumstance or whatever force beyond and larger than us – how are we not literally a form of a divine power for pets? The saying that 'You should first get a pet to see if You are fit to have offspring' is not without merit...

Monu-Mental

Directing breakdown and
disgrace before the whole cast

Too bad the mass is sightless with ignorance so vast
Thirteen syllables, thirteen lines to force a new take
Another posed act shot - fallow egos have been fed
No one knew what could have been left undone or unsaid
To the deepest dismay, no one cared, for goodness sake
Artist's block strained the result to befall foully fake
The mob heard laughter, didn't care about the tale's thread
Self-worth high as the flame, violent minds packed with lead
A crimson pond mirrors the wish to turn a new slate
And who crawls beneath the debris can stand as the last
Who observes with the sight from a script burned in the past


Curtains seal, clap for the chronic
longing to create

Now You Ψ Better: Are You Normal?

You know that moment when scientist warned humanity of the danger it has posed upon itself? More than two decades later, we barely started raising our heads to question the severity of our behavior. The measured reality, in its pure informational form, needs an amazing amount of time to enter into common knowledge. As it's the same with every branch of science, psychology suffers much unfairness in the face of rumors. These misconceptions are not only damaging to individuals and professions, but stop the actual data from being useful on a larger scale. So, I decided to address some of these fallacies in a nonsequential series of posts, each dealing with a cluster of concepts, which, when better understood, can hopefully bring better understanding between and within people. Let's give it a shot!

The first entry in the series dubbed Now You Ψ Better is about the so-called "normality".

Educate Me Plenty

As mentioned in the previous post, my schedule started getting denser not so long ago. Two weeks prior today, I also graduated with a bachelor's degree. The whole unnecessary ceremony crowned the two-year struggle with my research paper, which was inspired by the increasing problems in education at large. Although it dealt with an issue into which I invest a lot of interest, the thesis in itself was just a mandatory proof of my capabilities stuck in a frame of demands. In this entry, I am to approach the question of schooling reform devoid of wanting to live up to any expectations, except perhaps those of having a sensible proposal in mind.

A few things have to be cleared first. My theoretical proposition is more of an outline to a whole system that cannot and shouldn't be developed by one or just a few individuals. To make it work, many other powerful political structures also have to be rearranged if we desire to survive our own advancement, and such an effort takes time more than anything. Our society succumbed to the depths it is in now throughout known history and we cannot possibly expect to arise from here in just a few years. Huge changes can require generations. I will also avoid criticizing the current system, as it is simple to point fingers at what we dislike around us. There is a fair amount of debate on the subject to be found on the internet, so I would rather write about a concept I see in my mind.

They Say Rumor Has It

Restlessness smites me when it comes to rumors. I know about them, I had learned how they work and how ridiculous and even harmful they can get. They form a separate domain, one that is completely made up, a weird world consisting of abstract scopes of illusive ideas. Let me introduce You to the parallel reality of Rumorealm:

This conceptual realm, in which we live day by day, is built upon real-world data. The silhouettes of understanding which we can sense here are much different, though. They are intriguing replacements for uncertainty. As we walk through this place, our focus is captivated by how interesting the whole thing feels and authentic it seems. The real-world data which we're sure of (like time, places and people in them) make this illusory location ever so believable. It makes sense and that makes us feel good. Only two things matter here: insecurity of facts and the notability of the substitutes we make up for that insecurity. The progression of Rumorealm, however could easily fall apart if either of these two building blocks was missing (i.e. if events derived from real-world data were unambiguous, or the replacement rumors were unimportant) - except that we are pretty much wired to creating believable facade to cover up any plotholes in our narrative.

Events here are mostly spontaneous, but they can also be generated willfully by the gods of deception, who reign supreme. We are avatars of these gods. By absorbing the data from Rumorealm, we mediate them onward and rebuild its phony fabric. We rearrange it to be simpler and shorter. We never forget the strong messages we received, but we make them easier for further tattling. Sometimes we can be met with correctional measures and are presented with true facts that debunk falsehood, yet we might forget the debunking proof in favour of a what it tried to debunk − caused by effects known as the misinformation effect and the backfire effectTo find out more, check the WikiPedia Aticle on biased memory, and this and this research paper.. The essence of Rumorealm is to add our own little piece of distortion: we assimilate and emphasize information with our own understandings and fill in the gaps.

Indignation

Nearly everyone craves some sort of power. The most accepted definition of power is all about having influence over those who have it in fewer proportions. It's the ability to get a person to change Their behavior against Their will. While this certainly can't be disputed, I think there are two distinguishable trends in might. There is the one already mentioned – the symptom of an unforgiving tradition, which I call petty power. I borrow this expression from the book called "The Fire from Within", written by Carlos Castañeda. In His enchantingly displaced vision of the universe, Carlos writes about the importance of being impeccable. There are strategies and phenomena in life which can aid people in attaining impeccability if They know how to take advantage of them. One of these potentially assisting elements are the petty tyrants. In my short reinterpretation, these are all the people who long to dominate others. They are petty because They are nothing compared to the ultimate tyrant – existence. There is no evading the underlying properties that be, only finding a way amidst them. What good is power over others, if we can't control our very selves? So, these people who ape the sublime essence can be used as means to understand how to let go of self-importance.

This brings us to the second type of power, which is rarely taken seriously these days. That is the mastery of the self. This requires the riddance of self-importance. Don't confuse this idea with having no respect towards one's own existence. What it means is having the ability to see beyond one's own self-serving bias. I call this type of power true power. Essentially, beings holding true power cannot be deterred by any outside force. Yes, They can be destroyed, theoretically. Yet, since They have no pride in individual existence anymore, but rather the devotion to a set of ideas, the feeling of being victimized is replaced by the sheer satisfaction of living in accordance to Their dreams. Any energy otherwise spent on dealing with suffering imposed by other beings can now be targeted on achieving an intent. Schemes conspired against such a calculated intent can be inspected and dealt with in a sober manner. While wondering about this, the concept of soft power comes to mind, which was developed a decade ago by political scientist Joseph Nye. The two are different, though. Soft power still aims to persuade others to join our cause (and thus willingly do what we would want them to, without forcing Them), while true power doesn't bother with the adoption of anyone's will. The latter exists only for the sake of its own inquiry.

Perpetuum Mutato

Change. A constant in our lives. We are mostly aware of the unavoidability of it, but to which level of awareness are we willing to adopt its notion? Or, to rephrase that: to what extent are we willing to endure temporal unease to achieve long-termed improvement? For years now, I keep seeking out what I dislike about myself and do my best to overcome it. It is not an easy task. Not because change is hard (it's inevitable), but because it just might be one of the bigger challenges to understand how it goes around. There are a few ideas I managed to gather that might shed at least a bit of light on how to bravely let ourselves immerse into the flow of everlasting transition.

There is this psychotherapeutic theory of which I'm particularly fond of. It is called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. It has many aspects which might or might not be beneficial to a therapy, but what I'd like to focus on here are some of the particularly defined ideas within it: irrationality and hedonism.

According to REBT, irrationality can be divided into three "absolute demands" through which we burden our own lives. These are the demands toward ourselves (I must satisfy people), others (people must satisfy me) and circumstances (things must go as I imagined). As You can see, "must" is the central term of irrationality. We cannot demand anything from an unpredictable life. Expecting anyone or anything to function according to an indispensable plan is ludicrous at best. It should be an imperative to understand how a moderate aspiration (which is non-absolute and accordant to wishes instead of demands) can improve our existence.