There is so much going on in the world right now and things are moving at a mind numbing pace. It does lead me on some tangents of thought frequently. The drawback of the sheer amount of activity is that my thought only focuses on something for a brief period of time. That thought becomes ephemeral and poof I may no longer remember it.
One thing I have done in the past that I haven't done much in awhile is "write down what I am thinking about".
At the moment I am thinking about Problems versus Solution, and Failure versus Success.
What we do and how we behave as humans definitely has some common features that we all share. Some people may have a "disorder" that will change some behaviors. This disorder could end up being good, or it could end up being bad. It is mainly referred to as a disorder because, it doesn't adhere to the norm. Generally a disorder is viewed as a defect. The environment we live in will determine whether that ends up being true or not. Ultimately it is about survival, and whether the expression of you somehow carries on into the future.
Or is it?
For some people the now seems to be the only thing that truly motivates them. They also express truth in the most subjective way possible. The truth is they are the center of the universe and the only things that truly matter are the things they can see themselves, feel themselves, think themselves, and experience themselves. Yes, to some this is very self centered. Yet look around. If you truly observe you will notice a large portion of the population of humanity seems to operate this way.
Without any thought to the future whether they are expressed into the future will have a lot to do with chance, and circumstance. They do not seem as interested on making sure there is a future with some aspect of them in it.
Is this okay?
As a living thing there is this biological imperative to continue, and to leave a legacy. Is that the only way though? If we want to increase our odds of survival and expression into the future then this is an important way to view things. That doesn't mean it is the only way. It also seems we can make it so this imperative seems to lose some of it's importance.
I try to put myself in other people's shoes and I observe a lot. I cannot truly fathom this lack of interest in legacy and expression of yourself in some way. I still write about it and I share my attempts at trying to understand it. I can point out that it is there much like the elusive specter in the woods. It is just at the edge of my mind. Yet in the end it is a very alien form of thinking to me.
Emotion
We are so heavily influenced by emotion. If you think about it you can imagine the survival traits that emotions convey upon us. They also can bind to things and increase their importance in our mind. We think about things. It is almost like emotions attach some priority value to what we are thinking about.
The problem is I think we often let them control us a little too much.
We are increasingly being steered towards trying to have easy solutions, and easy answers. We seem to shy away from the things that might be complicated. We will instead try to fashion some quick easy answer that we can scam our own mind into accepting so it will let us get on with our lives.
We often look for one faction, or even one person to embody all of the woes we see in the world. Why? It is easy. Yet the truth is there are many factions, and many people and things that contribute to the woes AND the successes in the world. To try and juggle those things is not mentally easy. Thus, we seem to have been conditioned to avoid those.
These days fear is an emotion that I have a mental image of people running up carrying logs and anything they can find that will burn and fuel that fire. I can't point out one faction, or one person but it seems clear that somethings/someones are interested in bouncing us from one state of fear to another.
Why?
We do not think or act particularly well when fear is within us. We act haste. We react, rather than think. We are easier to steer and manipulate.
We can hear of a new problem and bounce from one problem to the next. The constant state of fear is coming so fast we don't have much time to consider solutions. That tendency to look for the easy thus makes it to where we will accept anything someone might suggest because that is easy, and we've just encountered the next thing to fear about so we need to stop thinking about this previous fear.
That was the initial seed that began me writing this. It was a simple one. This was it.
We focus on Problems so often yet don't seem to offer much in the way of solutions.
I've noticed that if people can't come up with some solution that feels EASY to them they will often do nothing about a problem. They'll wail and cry about the problem, and they may stay in a position of fear until they perceive some solution that feels easy.
The truth is many problems cannot be fixed with easy solutions. We need to work on them even if the solution is difficult. We must observe and adapt if our proposed solution proves to not be a solution after all.
The easy solutions these days seem to be the tools and trade of the con artists and scammers. They have realized human psychology is to panic and be in fear and desire an easy answer, and an easy target to blame. The con artists will provide both and they will have selected them in such a way that they benefit greatly.
I am intentionally not listing any particular examples. If you look around and pay attention you will notice them. If it is a quick and easy solution that someone quickly provided, and/or they could easily provide you one person, or group of people to blame then I suggest you think long and hard about it.
Run a mental simulation. Pretend in your mind their proposed solution has been enacted. Play it out in your mind doing your best to simulate behavior of people and human nature.
I can tell you that my findings seem to show that the easy solutions are usually scams and very flawed.
We need to be unafraid to try the difficult things. They don't get easier if we wait. In fact, they tend to get more difficult if we let the problems grow.
(Images generated by me using GROK after I had written the post. Added to give visual flavor to the article.)
HERE is the link to my conversating with GROK to generate the images: https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_0585e5bf-4e9b-4057-a71b-0c326a4c1de5
EDIT: I didn't notice how messed up that first image is until after I posted and was rereading it. I guess it fits with my brief foray into talking about disorders.