A Trending Experiment With Falling In Love

I figured if I was going to spend my time confronting this trending article(at least it seems to be trending on Facebook) on a few friend’s posts, I might as well make it official and transfer my thoughts into a blog before the CPU within me becomes worn of this subject, right?  Too bad!  I’m going to go ahead and do it instead of waiting for your response, haha.

( http://tinyurl.com/mmmd86p )

The woman who wrote about this experiment shared her perspective and her actual personal experience.  Her having a great personal experience with such an approach is fantastic, but not likely to create stable, long-lasting relationships the majority of the time in my mind for a few discomfiting reasons.

I honestly didn’t identify this experiment as anything too fascinating.  I say this simply because this article represented a nice realization that we can all feel close to each other as human beings, like we should all naturally do in the first place with each other, but barriers like societal assumptions, work and technology nourish the consequence, i.e., us all becoming very strange to each other. The more that worldly things take over our lives (like technology), the more amazing it will all seem when we partake in such an experiment as this, making it seem like we attain a much more profound connection with somebody else.

When I read this article, flashes of the animated movies “Frozen” and “Wall-E” came to mind.  “Frozen” came to mind because such a process reminds me of when the little sister is pretty much cooped up in the castle most of her life trying to reach out to her older sister, and then once they have this grand even at their castle, when she talks with the first guy who gives her obvious attention, she instantly falls madly in love with him, simply because he’s charismatic and they have a couple things in common, not to mention she has focused most of her life on her sister which makes their meeting seem so much more intense. This last reason is why I think of “Wall-E” as well.  All those silly humans planting their faces on those screens 99.99% of their lives, being consumed only by the technology right in front of their noses, that when they finally look away(to another human being for example), what they see and experience seems wildly and overwhelmingly grand.

I think the more our word develops, the more shocking such reactions will become and it will come to a point where we’ll crave it so badly and think it’s so super special that we automatically think it’s falling IN love or TRUE love.  I think it’s awesome how this psychologist helps people realize everyone else is just as deep as themselves, helps us care about each other through the opportunities of developing compassion for them, but I don’t think these things equal true love/being in love. I see it as just respecting, accepting, and feeling for the human race as a whole, something basic that nearly all of us lack in some ways.

I’m definitely not partial to the idea that there is no very special connection between someone in love according to the one presenting this research. If it was truly special, it would be impossible to happen with anybody else, or at least very many people at all, at least in my views.  I’m also concerned with the placebo effect such an experiment can have on many people.  As many of us realize, when a product is hyped-up enough(especially when it comes to something as enticing and important as love), we can feel like we’re getting a high when in reality, we just got a needle full of diluted sugar.  The beauty of psychology!  We desire love to be sweet, but it indeed needs to amount to more than a sprinkle of sugar in our lives.

These are the reasons I think this experiment wouldn’t be very effective for long for most people.  In summary, I think this is more about our lack of general connectivity with the human race, and after that matter, it’s about whether or not being in love is truly special. If you believe it’s not very special at all, then you’ll likely believe it can happen with nearly every being we can lay eyes on.

Donald Sterling Who?

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Apparently this Donald Sterling thing is pretty big right now. I don’t feel comfortable with such a bright spotlight being precisely adjusted onto a single individual. Though, I understand why racism itself is an issue, of course. In America, racism has diminished greatly in general thank goodness, but it still exists. I think we need to wear down the edges before attacking all the layers of the source. I think one of our issues as Americans or maybe humans all together as an entirety, is that many ideas are thrown out of proportion or exaggerated, either because we have trouble remembering that others have varying thinking processes and varying upbringings, or because we hear what we want to hear in order to propel our passionate mission against racism. Having a mission against racism is a great idea, but often our approaches are structured poorly and we focus too much on our own ways of perceiving and breaking thoughts and actions down.

There are many little underlying factors unaccounted for that are anthropological or psychological that are hardly touched, which is an article or blog post in itself. You can’t know all the layers of a person or all the layers of a person’s opinion unless you are them. This is basic elementary assessment, correct? Well that’s okay, a rotten foundation is the ultimate err in most life situations, but the awesome thing is that we can eventually rebuild these things better every time with the more introspection and practice we have. Speaking of factors unaccounted for, someone I know brought up statistics recently that prove that white people empathize with lighter-skinned people more than darker-skinned people. I think some people may be looking at this in the wrong angle, I’ve seen this brought up before on another website in the past and made the same conclusion.

First of all, let me add that this research does not at all prove that the average person is incapable of empathizing with those of the same skin color, but that it is simply easier to empathize with someone who has the same skin color as ourselves. This may be exaggerated into the most narrow ways, but people who are easily perceived to be more like ourselves in general, no matter how insignificant or obvious the characteristics, are easier to empathize with and relate to. This trickles down to more than just empathy as well, it’s natural for us to establish positive feelings of any sort to those who simply seem more like ourselves, nothing more. Hopefully we can put all that behind us now and continue chipping away at racism.

My opinion is that doing something as simple as using someone’s skin color, something you can’t even control, in a sentence with negative implications qualifies you as a racist, which is what Sterling did. Though, people like this need our love and patience the most. A friend of mine asked me if Sterling should have his position taken away from him and cease to be the manager of the L.A, Clippers. Well, there are lots of bad people in charge, everyone has flaws about them, everyone sins, so you might as well demote nearly everyone who is in charge of anything in my opinion. It depends on if he’s causing harm or not. If these are merely his opinions of certain people that just happened to be caught on tape because he was sharing with someone close to him, then it shouldn’t be blown up like this in the media. Many of us keep awful secrets to ourselves, people can go an entire lifetime knowing someone without knowing some of their friend’s or their leader’s awful truths. If he showed his blatant racism through actions, that would be a different story.

Donald Sterling is not racism. Racism is racism. Now, let’s keep focus on entire ideas or actions that threaten our lives, not on silly individuals. Let’s inform ourselves and educate peacefully. 🙂

Words Hold Immense Power Because Society Told You So

You cannot tell someone how to aesthetically present themselves, you cannot tell someone how to use a word, you cannot tell anyone these things with any rationalization. It doesn’t matter what race you are, you do not have the right of any influence whatsoever. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re imbedded in, you can dress whatever style you please and use whatever label you so choose. People, you have the freedom to choose to be a good person and also choose to use words in harmless ways. What you put into a word is all that’s there, the rest is in the imagination. Do not let words have power over you or assume your words have power over others. Too many people are skiddish with words, words that some ancestor a thousand years ago made up or words random teenagers made up a couple decades ago.

Words are empty and a person has the right to instill their own personal angle into any word they please. Yes, I’m referring to words that are usually dubbed as potentially offensive, words that were whipped up by imperfect humans, or meanings & intentions that strangers strive to stuff your face with- acting as if you put it all there yourself. People either use their own interpretations of words for harmless fun or to think outside the box with good intentions. Yes, there are people out there who do it sarcastically or to troll, but we have no clue which ones. Why continue to strangle each other with words that are man-made? Why do we limit ourselves to this? Why can’t we turn our focus to the things that truly matter, people who hold for us that mysterious thing called love or life-threatening events in our country or other countries that are laughing at us behind our backs right now?

If you cut out letters of a word from a newspaper and scattered them on a desk, that word has no power, correct?  If you aligned these letters together to make sense, that word still holds no power.  If someone walks by, sees that word on the desk and reads it out loud, that word still holds no power.  Don’t ever let people who only see in black and white, who think only inside a small box that they have let society build for them, who live to sniff out every obscure crevice for a sign of potentially imperfect intentions tell you what actions to take or tell you specific ways you should be feeling through these words.

Know that only you know your true intentions, and that is all that will ever matter.