Constructive Critism

         Do you know the difference between intellectual critism and a blast mockery? Well, syariah law does. In Islam, there's a distinctive difference between them though it is largley imperceptible. And well, Western especially , perceive syariah law as barbaric, rigid and irrevocable once passed, but it really is not, seriously. It is just like any other legal tradition that aims are justice and equality for all. But like any other legal tradition, they are also exposed to corruption and misconduct. ( maybe we should discuss more about syariah law other time)

          Okay back to my initial question, intellectual critism ? They are allowed for one primary reason. They behaved as a constructive critics. When you have someone to pinpoint your mistakes and brought them to perspective, you should thanked them. At least they care enough to help you address your weaknesses, and now knowing it gives you opportunity to make it up to it. In social psychology , there's a phenomenon called groupthinking where all the members of a group got caught up with their unique internal logic, in time it grows stronger and polarized, until they looses diversity and ends up making fiasco. That's why you will find in history unified parties that once were so great suddenly slowly their influence withered. They looses their momentum because they lacks one crucial criteria that always keeps thing progressing, diversity, in opinions and ideas.

         

          The great Umar al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islamic civilization, were once criticized by a drunken man. Amazingly, despite the sinning state of that man, he accepted his critics and move on without a single sign of rejection. When asked for explanation, Umar answered that in the man's comment there's a truth and thats's the one should be valued. A critism should not be measured in relation to the speaker, but only to the merit of what he is saying. If a man in his position can wisely accept critism, then we should have the humility to receive one too.

          Another lesson to be learned is that, giving advise to someone is encouraged despite the fact we ourselves are engaged in the sin. This is not hypocrisy. This is Islam telling you advice is important. The advice might not help you who are already trapped in the incorrigible sin, but it surely will be benefial to thwart them far from ever desire the sin.

        

        When you share your knowledge, belief,  weltanchauung or worldview with someone like-minded, it definitely grew stronger and you become more passionate. A release of pleasure thats strengthen the relating neural connection. You are experiencing group polarization. This will lead to groupthinking if they are not well handled.

         I'm sure you have heard the term reverse psychology. It exist, I will not argue that, but do they constitute intellectual critism? Let me make it clearer, reverse psychology is, for example, you insult someone in attempt to make them response positively to prove you're wrong. But this method solely depends on the character of the receiver, what if he/she has a faint-heart? It might send them a shock and completely shatter their self-confidence. Well that's not so intellectual but rather looking 50-50 of destroying one's emotion or the other.

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Alexander The Great

           We have outstandingly amazing warriors that have flourish throughout history as an ever-lasting source of inspiration. Their fighting spirit resembles the true power of the human will. They continue to provide motivation for incoming achievers, their fearless nature in embracing conflicts and taking devastating risk and coming out victorious had been a major quote for businessmen, politicians, students and any person who wills to fight their pedestrian fate and grab success.

           Alexander The Great was indeed all-deserving of the title. Imagine, a man who empowers the overall ability of a true leader, an intellectual privately tutored by the greatest philosopher of ancient history, and a soldier trained under the Philip 2 army. He leads his own army  into wars, subdued all nation that he wage conquer, and at all time maintain conciliatory posture facing the defeated. He did not succumb to cruelty and misuse of power, though he possesed the greatest power that stretch out over lands that seems borderless for a man to traverse.

           He dreams to conquer the whole world. In his empire, he manage to unite the people, foster  the mergence of the west and east culture to form Hellenistic culture, and exchange weltanchauung or world view of Greeks and the Persians. He was far-sighted, man with vision, he denied peace treaty offered by the Persian tyrant, he continued his conquest and liberate the lands under oppression. He manage to accomplish this military feat only at the age twenty four.

          But there's another man. A man that bested Alexander The Great in battlefield. Alexander was a witty warrior, but Khalid al-Walid was unchallengable in his fighting prowess. Khalid was recorded to participate in nearly 100 battle, in which he suffers great injury, but there's no worldly pain that can take his life away. He died a sick man on his deathbed. Though he pursue martydom for his entire Muslim life, he only manage to massacre his body but life remain fierce in him. Stories tells he cried on his deathbed, regret that he did not die a marty. But God raised him with the title 'Saifullah' ,literally translated as The Sword Of God. Upon reflection, it is only fitted that The Sword Of God shall never fail in battlefield, as he never did.

          Khalid al-Walid and Alexander will forever remain intact in our heart, I want to be just like them in my life. Man who was respected by fellow companions, and feared by their enemies.

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Bleach and Detergent

Many would like to think that they are in control of themselves, but do we really heed our life according to our own desires and rationale ?

         

        Our conscious brain operates on a mechanism called the associative coherence. Have you ever wonder what sparks the next word in your brain when you are thinking? Sometimes brilliant ideas just pop out, cartoons illustrate this eureka moment with scintillating light bulb burst out of nowhere above one's head. A truly remarkable moment. But that's really just an exaggerated representation. What about this continuous chain of thoughts that's keep on going seamlessly and endlessly in our brain, what determine the next thought? They seems to be so natural and fluent, from one idea to another idea. Well, you might connotes an idea to be a concept, but a simple noun,adjective,adverb and all other parts of speech are just an internal conception that we agreed to contort into a vocalized sound. The English philosopher John Locke expounded on this complexity of human language and in his explanation he represents words as ideas. So, back to the primary question, what determine the next word or thoughts in our mind?

        

          By the idea 'associative' itself you could have guessed what determine the next word I typed. Association. We make association, an object to a sound, a sound to characters, characters to sound back. These characters later are arranged by association to form writing. This is a simplified summary of the true machination of our conscious brain.

        

          The next thing we are going to delve into will questioned your free will. There's more to association than meets the eyes. Psychology in its young and ferment years suggested that association happen on a conscious level and they link from one to another. But recent studies surprised psychologist, association can also takes place in our subconscious mind, they linked to ideas that do not register into our consciousness, though it is affiliated, but we are not aware of them. More pertinent, association can happens from three to more ideas at a time.

S O _ P               W _ S H

        

 Try to fill in the blank with an alphabet you find first in your brain.

       

           I bet it will be an A. If it is, I proved that you have been primed into thinking soap instead of soup, wash instead of wish. Well maybe because I planted the thought in your brain without your conscious. But my plantation of that particular idea is not like the one of the adventurous mission in the movie Inception that takes numerous detrimental level of dreams. The plantation occurs when you read the title of this article.

        

           We can intentionally disrupt the association of our mind. Politicians and advertisers are precisely the camp that exploit this loop hole to their interest. It is called the priming effect. In the advertising industry this effect is more widely recognised as subliminal message.

      

          Lets say you went to a supermarket, you are uncertain of what to purchase. There's an awful lot of advertising posters everywhere, you ignore them as you walk, probably thinking the shop owner are not good with internal decoration, filling them with nuisance instead. They might have escape your focused vision , but the images  certainly entered your peripheral vision. As you are filling the shopping basket, suddenly you are reminded of the toothpaste that had been squirt out till the last drop from your bathroom, then you grab a toothpaste and throw it in the basket. As you were checking  back the list in your head, most likely you thought of maggi now. You took them and went to the counter and ready to pay, that's when you realize the poster had been about toothpaste and maggi.

    

           Adverts are scarily effective because of this priming effect. They register the message into your sequence of thoughts unconsciously, so when you go down the sequential list in your head, you will inevitably bump into these seemingly natural thought out of your own desires, but truly they are planted. No body likes to be gullible, but we are an easy target of deception.

        

         But dont worry, your are still the chief in charge. Priming effect is robust but not necessarily large. Most that fall victims are the ones with uncertain mind, if you are determined, knows what you want and what you do not need, you will not be susceptible to these effect.

      

         What's more scary about priming effect is that they do not necessarily effect our thoughts and desires but also our physicalized ideas. If you are primed with elderly thoughts, like wrinkles, ill-cough, fatigue and alike, the odds are that you will be slow in your motion too. Probably you will walk down the stairs much slower than usual. Okay that instance might not be convincing, try this. If you are primed with victors stories, you are more likely to pursue your goal more vigorously. This physicalized ideas are a product of priming effect, that have been dubbed the ideomotor effect.

    

         When we knows our natural propensities, trends that we have adopt so naturally, we will gain advantage over ourselves rather than be at the mercy of the greedy businessmen, that wants the last penny in your pocket, and that politicians that want to exploit your loyalty to gain more power and accumulate wealth. Believe me, politicians and businessmen are more equipped with workings of human mind than leadership knowledge, they would care to hire an expert if could, and most of them do. Even Adolf Hitler, the demagogic tyrant, mastered oratorical body language to convince his people to succumb to his leadership.

    

         That is why Plato hated democracy. He believe justice will not prevail until kings becomes philosopher, and philosopher becomes king. He believed only the minority intelligentsia are capable of filtering the gobbledygook and demagogueries of the eventual corruption of all politician who desires only power. And now is more crucial than ever to recognize the lies, as they are spreading across all means of cables and print behemoths.

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Psychology.

        We tend to reduce all the situational behavior of someone to our perception of them. We often try to create a narrative that explain the causal connection between a person outward behavior and his internal intentions, the causative affiliation. This is because they provide a coherence and a flow that we can read and interpret, rather than the messy and veneer randomness of our behavior. Why we love reading and writing, or at least we like them better than spontaneous talking, why ? Its because they represent our organized thoughts, and they are the most effective method of sharing knowledge that capable to surpass the barrier of spacetime since ancient history .We knows that scattered reasonings block our understanding, no body likes to not understand. Our yearn for understanding of the events around us force our mind into narrative fallacy. If someone is making a fuss over an accidental spill of coffee, we relate in to intolerance and bad-temper , but, perhaps he was just having a bad day and the coffee incident break his overbearing patience.

       When I was small, there was a lot I could not understand when I watch English movies. You know how complicated their conflict could be. When stumble with a confusion, I force myself into a narrative to give me a sense of clarity , most of the time, they divert from the original course of the story. I followed the fallacious narrative ( I didnt know it was wrong at that time) because it makes the story so much easier to understand. Without understanding, the movie will only be gibberish to me and a waste of 2 hours, so I forced connection between events in the movies to create an understanding, and that is an example of narrative fallacy.

       Often wonder why first impression are so important? It is actually an importance borne out of our flawed perception. Our first appearance of ourselves to someone new might well establish the lasting perception of ourselves for them. Take for example an employee who forgot to bring his urgent file to the meeting, his boss will immediately mark this bad circumstance as a consequent of his forgetfulness. This flawed perception leads to the same conclusion in subsequent incidents. Any other mistakes the employee made in the future will be linked to his first. From a forgetful person , he will be labelled as reckless, from reckless becomes unreliable, and in the end it takes a toll over all his frailities. Simple mistakes that often goes unnoticed and pardoned when somebody else do it, will now be something that is forever linked to his attitude. And this effect is called the halo effect. This effect can takes a variety of context, positive or negative, as long as they stands out above the other, everything else will be judge in central relation to them. 

        Ancient philosophy  describe that our reaction are not the response to an event, but rather to our interpretation of the event. This is why some can laugh at a joke, and others take umbrage. Everybody have a different neural connection that made them unique, even identical twins who shared exact dna constituents have far contrasting neural connection. That is why we cannot expect everyone to perceive our actions as sincere, one's man priest can be another's charlattan. Look at our democratic leaders,  they are continuously in a derisive fight, accusing one another as charlattan just to win public's support. Sometimes they stand on the notion that is spectacularly idiot in our perspective, but they seems to be very assuring in their arguments when asked of the stance.

       This also can be observed in the intellectual circles. A lot of intellectual luminaries have diversified opinions concerning just one issue. You think Einstein couldn't be wrong? He argued with Neil Bohr over the randomness of the quantum world, and that's when he quipped the now famous quote ," God doesn't roll a dice". But time had proven him wrong, the microworld is in fact dictates by indeterminism and probability, a place where reality breaks apart and our common sense looses its grip ; two particles can be in two state at the same time.

Why some can so ardently defend Israeli, while we here so blatantly despise Israel's violence ? Because our neural connection tells each of us a different story, this is called cognitive biases. Nobody escapes biases. All of us was nurtured with a certain beliefs that we readily, and innocently accept as general truth without any proper dose of skepticism . We approach the world with this preconceived mindset , and they form all of our judgements of the events occuring in our small milieu, when its needed, we extend the scenario to include global events. But of course this cognitive biases can be overcome by rational syllogism. That is why Socrates invented elenchus, an argumentative debate to eliminates as much individual biases as possible and to reach closer to the objective truth.

       But we are also a creature of habits and most of our daily interaction are founded on our idiosyncracy. For instance, look at the words you talk in a day, and where certain sentences are repeated over and over again. We repeat the same curse words when we are sad in those when we are angry. Its because we have idiosychronize our speech. When we are angry, a sequence of reaction emerge, we might shout, throw stuff and breaks fragile things, or our face will turn grumpy. Habits governed our daily experience. We have unconsciously adopt certain automatic response for our daily interaction, and it makes a lot of things easier for our brain, to reduce big task into fixed response. We might want to think that we are a rational being  driven by a conscious soul that are in control of every decision we made, but the truth is most of our daily action and conversation are reactionary, and predetermined by our previous encounter of that particular situation.

     Try to be more mindful to your daily activities and you will be surprised, you are controlled by your habits more than you think. The way you walk, the way you run, in what way you usually goes up the stairs ; run or walk or running and jumping two steps at a time ; switching through tv channels, exploding your knuckles, listen to music, and watch movies. All of these activities do not requires your critical faculty to examine them and decide, rather you have been activated by impulse to do them, and most of them are effortless. Activities that are subjected to our habits will be registered to our conscious mind as cognitive ease. Conversely you will experience cognitive strain when you engage yourself with unfamiliar robust activity, they demand increase attention and focus. Consequently, our eyes will dilate and our heartbeat will increase blood flow to the needed organs.

    We truly are exceptional beings. Our ability to create habits allows us to spend less time doing unimportant activities. If we are aware of every things our body and mind are processing, it will be sluggish and it will subsequently consumes unnecessary amount of time. Habits give us the opportunity to neglect certain task as it can be done unconsciously, while the conscious mind are focused at a more subtle task.

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