Us humans can also be stupid

Taken from an article on Substack authored by Gurwinder

While perusing the internet over the Christmas break I came across an article which listed out various human behavioural laws and concepts. I have picked the best ones to share with you, of course adding my own spin where appropriate!

• Solomon’s Paradox

  We're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But Kross et al (2014) found that viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment, so when trying to help yourself, imagine you're helping a friend.

  As the saying goes try walking in someone else’s shoes, or in this case try being someone else looking at you in your shoes. In a therapeutic setting this can be useful to unstick a stuck conflict.

• Cunningham’s Law

  The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer, because people are more interested in criticizing others than helping them.

  A good example of this that I see regularly is our own internal voice, try instead to be your own best friend

• Anatta

  There's nothing constant about a person. Habits are picked up & dropped. Beliefs asserted & refuted. Dreams forged & shattered. Passions ignited & extinguished. We are a work-in-progress being constantly rewritten.

  And yet we’re all judged as if we’re final.

  We can be our own worst enemy here, especially judging our current self instead of what we could become – there is another way.

• Surrogate Activities

  The more we eliminate struggles from our lives, the more we create artificial opposition – sports, video games, Twitter culture wars – because the mind wants peace, but also needs challenges.

• Shirky Principle

  To ensure survival, institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. For example, arms suppliers lobby politicians to push for new wars, and light bulb manufacturers deliberately make their bulbs shorter-lived so you buy them more often.

  All except Lilac Pearl of course! We hope to teach you life long skills, which means we may never see you again…and we’re ok with that! 😊

• Noble Cause Corruption

  The greatest evils come not from those seeking to do bad, but from those seeking to do good and believing the ends justify the means. Ironically, few things justify the immoral treatment of others more than the belief that you're more moral than them. Us humans are complicated – right?

• Noise Bottlenecks

  Consuming online content makes us feel like we're learning, but 90% of the content is useless junk—small talk, clickbait, marketing—which crowds out actual info from our minds. As such, while we feel we're getting smarter we’re actually getting stupider.

  See our previous blog on is tech good for our mental health

If you would like some help with life or want to get unstuck …..