Just like the body is what it eats, the mind is what it experiences. This is a truth with vast and grave implications when it comes to the types of entertainment we invest our time in. Entertainment is used as a social programming tool. When entertained, the mind is open and relaxed, easy to infiltrate.
Nobody can deny that we’ve entered a new era of technological progress. The so-called Digital Revolution is but the latest in a series of intellectual milestones that started with the Industrial Revolution. However, there’s something special about this era: exponential development of technology & methodology.
The human need for belonging and confirmation has not disappeared. Consumerism is an economic tool that is capitalizing on this need. It’s the wrong cure for something that isn’t even a problem. And it’s proving to be increasingly costly for the future of our ecosystem and thus, our quality of life.
Mentatul Monthly Focus
November 2019 Edition
– Child Psychology –
Some adults lack morality even after an entire lifetime. Yet, as a study shows, healthy ethical values are something that the vast majority of us are born with. So when does one lose one’s moral compass? Perhaps, like almost any quality in life, it has to be cultivated.
It is said that „ignorance is bliss”. It’s a well-known and controversial saying. Ignorance, by most current definitions, is a bad thing. The dictionary definition is “the condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed.” But this definition covers a very wide range of conditions. Being uneducated is, admittedly, not a good thing. However, the state of being uninformed or unaware may, in some cases, be helpful towards one’s life. How so? Read on.
Mentatul Monthly Focus
October 2019 Edition
– Antibiotics –
The antibiotics industry is going through rough times. Big Pharma is heavily polluting Asia, where India and China are the main producers of the world’s most commonly used drugs.
But it’s even worse when companies give up researching new antibiotics because these sort of medicine doesn’t give enough profit.
Throughout history stretches a long list with names of activists that were persecuted, tortured and even killed. Sometimes, their suffering or death only accelerated the changes they fought for.
But there’s an even longer (and mostly unknown) list with the names of hidden activists. Those that have treaded carefully and taken fewer risks in order to ensure their safety and thus, the longevity of their work. These are the little-known heroes that operated patiently, within the confines of a system (and often working around the system), changing it from the inside, slowly but surely (and often collaborating with the “outsiders” more than we will know in this lifetime).
What determines the success of a message? The shock and confrontation approach, or a slow and careful process of sculpting society? A sprint prodding others to act, or a marathon of implementation? The answer is: any mix of the above. That’s where an activist’s strategy comes into play. And let’s not forget that chance also plays a role.
Mentatul Monthly Focus
August 2019 Edition
– Spamming privacy into numbness –
While surfing the web, did you perhaps, just by chance, come across popup messages and notifications? Doesn’t it seem like there’s more of those with every passing year? Have you been assaulted by updated “terms and conditions” statements from the plethora of services you use?
Notifications about cookies abound. The GDPR “spam” is wreaking havoc. At least in the EU, surfing is becoming increasingly annoying. The first access on almost any given site leads to at least two popups, and perhaps a third one about allowing the site to give notifications, or a fourth about social media interactions, or a fifth about sharing location… the list goes on and on.
This article focuses on the following 6 “main sources” of privacy-related notification spam:
1. The EULA (End User License Agreement)
2. Cookies
3. GDPR
4. Ad blockers
5. Social media-related notifications
6. Websites forcing users to install native apps
It is agreed that life on Earth started with single cells, around 4 billion years ago. After a very, very long time, roughly 2 billion later, multicellular life appeared. This followed a catastrophic event called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). But what was catastrophic for others was a gift for us. Without the oxygen created during the GOE, we wouldn’t have been here. Multicellular life brought a plethora of evolutionary advantages and soon enough, dominant lifeforms were born. Living longer, stronger and, most importantly, smarter.
So what does this have to do with corporations, capitalism and the stock market? As I’ll show, quite a lot. The current market ecosystem is a place where companies undergo natural selection. But unlike the past 4 billion years, the evolution of our economic organisms is supercharged, almost out of control – this, unfortunately, sometimes comes with a steep cost for our environment and current social structures.
But what if a new breed of corporation triggers a financial chain reaction (like the GOE), wiping out most of its competition? Already, a new generation of companies is starting to take shape. And, as new ways to apply technology are found, the chance of a new business model emerging is much greater. Capitalism is bound to evolve.
Mentatul Monthly Focus
June 2019 Edition
– Action, reaction and consequence-based education –
In my life as a human, husband and father, I was often confronted with the four words above. So I decided to highlight them all at once and see what shows up.
We’ll start with the differences. “Revenge is, by nature, personal; justice is impersonal, impartial, and both a social and legal phenomenon” and “Revenge is predominantly emotional; justice primarily rational”.
The difference between consequences and punishment is extremely important when it comes to child education.
This article will go through:
1. Don’t Confuse Revenge With Justice: Five Key Differences
2. Punishments vs. Consequences: Which Are You Using? (child education)
3. Truths About Consequences (child education)
4. Punishment (definition)
5. Retributive justice (definition)
Mentatul Monthly Focus
May 2019 Edition
– Expectation Management –
Happiness = Reality – Expectations
I came across this “formula” after a rather difficult day in my life at the end of which I found my expectations put through a blender and then thrown down the toilet. This isn’t the first time this happened. Being an optimist makes the clash with my own expectations even worse.
I decided to look more deeply into this topic and came across the above formula, which for a while seemed to make sense. Luckily, I wrote this article and I realized that of course things aren’t as clear cut. It’s good that “expectations” seems to be a subject everybody + their dog love to debate. That made it very easy for me to find some useful information about the topic.
This article will go through:
1. 5 Benefits of Having No Expectations
2. How Expectations Undermine Our Relationships and Happiness
3. Expectations: Why You Should Have Them
4. High Expectations + Reality = Happiness
5. The Truth About Expectations in Relationships
How to destroy democracy in 7 simple steps: 1. Employ representative democracy. 2. Own the democratic menu. 3. Control education. 4. Control the media. 5. Suppress dialogue. 6. By controlling education & the media, representative democracy should be presented just as “democracy”: this is the real democracy, there is no other. 7. Continuously spray each crop of politicians and research new spraying methods and compounds.
Oh, democracy, how proud some countries are to have you. But oh, democracy, are you really there? The vast majority of “democratic” countries in the world employ a twisted version of the original concept called “representative democracy”. That is to say, instead of direct democracy – where all citizens can directly express their opinion about each and every single thing happening in their society) – the country is run by a select group of “experts” (politicians) who are supposedly more qualified to decide regarding what’s best for their constituents.
Now-a-days, few people seem to realize that specialized ministries (education, agriculture, development) are in fact drowned by graduates of political schools and other bureaucrats that have almost no clue about the ministry they’re supposed to lead. These people are quickly transformed into puppets of corporations that gladly offer their “advice” regarding how things should be run.
Mentatul Monthly Focus
April 2019 Edition
– (War-torn) Developing Countries –
The way superpowers and developed countries have spent money in order to „help” developing countries is often highly questionable. The „help” ranges from plain naive to ruthless neo-colonialism.
What adds insult to injury is that more often than not, the problem was caused by those „helpful” nation-states in the first place. This is a very complex topic that, for now, I will not debate. I’ll just give you the information along with a few short comments.
1. We’re going to start with borders, more specifically what happens when one draws a straight line between communities that share the same religion or put vastly different cultures in the same bucket.
2. Then we’re going to go into neo-colonialism with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
3. A naïve interlude will tell the story of an idealist computer scientist who hoped that giving poor children laptops would improve their chances of success in a world where technology plays an ever-increasing role. We will never know if he was right, because the project failed (not with a bang, but with a whimper).
4. No list of atrocities done to/in developing countries would be complete without a story about weapons trade.
5. The dismal situation in the world’s youngest country.
Just like the body is what it eats, the mind is what it experiences. This is a truth with vast and grave implications when it comes to the types of entertainment we invest our time in. Entertainment is used as a social programming tool. When entertained, the mind is open and relaxed, easy to infiltrate.
Nobody can deny that we’ve entered a new era of technological progress. The so-called Digital Revolution is but the latest in a series of intellectual milestones that started with the Industrial Revolution. However, there’s something special about this era: exponential development of technology & methodology.
The human need for belonging and confirmation has not disappeared. Consumerism is an economic tool that is capitalizing on this need. It’s the wrong cure for something that isn’t even a problem. And it’s proving to be increasingly costly for the future of our ecosystem and thus, our quality of life.
