Social Science - Blog Posts

Hell yes I'm disagreeing with my prof on this partner assignment.

Reasons why:

1. I disagree.

2. It's only my part of the project that disagrees.

3. Will I be thrown in jail for this? I think not.

4. If I wanted to agree with my prof I would have taken a goddamn physics class.

For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them. - Sir Thomas Moore

The main response by the authors in defense is that genetic diversity is a ‘proxy variable.’ This is a common assertion, but I find it really infuriating. I happen to drink coffee most days, which correlates with my happiness. So coffee consumption is a ‘proxy’ for my happiness. Therefore, I can put it in a regression and predict the relationship between my happiness and the amount of times I go to the bathroom. Ergo universal conclusions: ‘Relieving yourself improves mental well-being.’ New policy— you should relieve yourself at least two times per day in order to maintain high levels of emotional well-being.

Kyle Peyton Regarding this controversy.

How to dominate class politics?

Whether in class or workplace, it is inevitable that there will always be a struggle for power (specifically social dominance), regardless of whether you want it or not. Those who are unversed risk social isolation or marginalisation in their respective environments.

The problem of taking an apolitical stance is its potential to affect you, especially an impediment to your goals/achievements. Even if it isn’t the case, it needlessly increases your liability and competency, forcing yourself to be at the highest standard of conduct all the time. This is stressful and an unrealistic expectation because no human being is perfect.

1. Be fierce and firm

This is easier said than done. If you carry yourself wrongly, you may inadvertently portray yourself as something more unfavourable than expected.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to resort violence or act like a hooligan to create such perception.

First impression matters. This is scientific. Within the first 7-30 seconds, your appearance and actions are being fastidiously scrutinised to deduce your personality and characteristics. Whether it is accurate or not, we can always manipulate their presumptions to make them think the way we want them to… such as your strong eye contact, authoritarian voice and tall, open posture.

Cause a deterrence effect. Before anyone undermines you, take the first-mover advantage and unleash fury on them. Limit the scope of the victim(s) to the minimum and the audience to the maximum. It may seem pointless to just victimise 1 person, but its effect is far-reaching to the rest of the watching audience. This is human’s instinct to learn and adapt, to prevent such nasty incident from potentially happening on them in the future.

Exert your authority. Don’t stay quiet and give in. According to the broken window theory, for every compromise that you make, it diminishes the perceived fear you instilled and immediately expose yourself to subversion. Hence, eroding your dominance.

NB: Be as original as possible. It’s OK to re-use certain phrases/actions that you’ve picked up from elsewhere, but not re-applying them to the environment with the same audience.

2. Be charismatic

This is often overlooked when discussing this kind of topic. Charisma is power; leadership is authority.

Successful people are leaders; they have the ability to get people around them to help them achieve their ultimate goal. It’s not what you do; it’s why you do it -- that is what gets people behind you. They are able to articulate a compelling or captivating vision, and are able to arouse strong emotions in their followers.

Source: https://www.elitedaily.com/money/entrepreneurship/charismatic-people-successful

I’ve seen people who are ostracised due to their stern moral high ground stance. Their heartless attitude lacks empathy, which makes them more hated and excluded than those who are anti-social.

When many people like you (from any spectrum), you gain enormous amount of soft power (leverage). The leverage that you have enable you to easily seek help whenever you need and a biased defence when you are provoked.

In fact, if your charisma is high enough, you don’t need any leadership at all. Because authority comes from power, if you’re charismatic enough, you automatically have the influence of authority to the person in-charge.

3. Do not tussle with the authority/superior/in-charge

This is common sense. It’s suicidal to mess up with your discipline master or your boss  — generally anyone above you (seniors). Those people are in position to immediately act in reprisal, with guaranteed risk-free to retributions.

“A friend is better than a foe.”

Since so, it is worthwhile to make them your allies instead of adversaries, even if it is a need to be submissive/acquiescent to their unreasonable demands or unfair comments.

4. Pick the right side.

This is actually the least important, but it can be very effective if you’re affiliated with influential persons. It’s like a start boost, but you still have to build your image up from scratch, but you’ll have very high tolerance from the rest. They won’t pick on you often or as much as you would if you were alone.

Your initial affiliation is very important, and unfortunately, it’s very difficult to pick the best affiliation during the first encounter.

Remember, not everyone can dominate. There can only be 1 true dominant (can be shared) at any given time. If there’s already one, your best bet is to be the Second instead of having an endless conflict. Additionally, a defeat risks being shunned forever.

“War is expensive. Peace is priceless”

Disclaimer: This analysis is based on my personal experience in a harsh school environment. It may be different from yours and you need to apply the strategies wisely. Overuse or invalid use of strategies may have deleterious effects. You’re forewarned.

Humility pays off… but only in the long-term

Since young, all children are ingrained the common values of humility and integrity. What’s more virtuous than someone with inflated sense of self-esteem who constantly vies for recognition built with a wall of lies than a quiet, well-doing boy/girl?

“Sit down, be humble”

Unfortunately, such notion of true humility is mostly over especially in the Internet age. It’s so easy to “gain reputation” on social media nowadays. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the Likes/Loves/Views counter rapidly tickling upwards after every new post/video is made.

Thus, it fuels instant gratification and demands for more posts or fresh content to be made more regularly, which eventually erodes the value of humility in real life. (e.g. literal "updates" on Instagram) This is something unnoticeable that everyone overlooks when interacting on social media. This change of norm slowly aggravates into public request/demand for Likes/Loves on recent posts.

Other forms of inexplicit showing off include asking for advice/comments on the newly purchased accessory or item. Essentially, any action that calls for attention, whether deemed explicit or inexplicit, is sufficient to be labelled “showing off.”

It’s intrinsically recognisable, but unspoken

It seems to be widely misunderstood that just because someone doesn’t point that out, it means they don’t know or don’t notice. The reason why no one points out is because

It’s too miscellaneous. It’d backfire if the person is too picky on things that are too insignificant. And it’s hard to substantiate too.

Risk of social isolation. It’s quite foul to point out such thing to anybody. I’d personally also consider it as an act of hostility if anyone tries to point this to me, whether publicly or privately.

Friends' bias. (True) Friends will always respect and defend for one another. They would rather close an eye than pointing it out.

Generally, in most cases, they fall under (1). No one is that pernickety to point out such trivial matter.

Of course, it's possible that there are instances that go completely unnoticed. Nevertheless, they are still intrinsically recognised but can't be verbalised. That's the reason why ultimately real humble persons are recognised and commended as it's something rare.

So why should you be really humble?

Hmm, I can't thing of any practical benefit other than to gain even more reputation. 😆 This kind of reputation gain is actually more effective and prestigious, which means more enduring than the short-term, instant gratification.

The downsides of being silent about your achievements are…

You'll not receive any immediate flattery. It's all silent. Even though no one talks about it, but the positive image that you exhibit in their minds are cumulative. It's a kind of long-term investment. 😉

Your recognition may never be seen, forever. This is like gambling… becsuse there's no guarantee for the long-term "investment." You presume that they saw it, but they might not. They might be distracted or not be bothered to care about it at all. 😜

However, whenever anyone discovers your achievement by themselves, they would be more impressed and awed than you would show off to them personally.

So what should you do?

It's all about long-term and short-term reputation gain. If you choose humility, the best approach is be yourself. Don't carry any expectations in your mindset, just think it as your own characteristic and you'll eventually get used to resist the temptation of reward.

NB: However, at any point the mindset slips, and you try to vie for attention, no matter how inexplicit it seems to be, it's always intrinsically recognisable.

Radicalisation, Hate, and the Great Die Out.

I didn’t write for a while, it is hard work using my brain to the extent that I do so time off is necessary, as any hyper vigilant person may already know... and for the record, I am playing with this “great die out” in the title. You should know that I classify those using phrases like “the great reset, the great bla bla, etc” as radicalised people.

I want to write about our ongoing, and in my view, dangerous journey that is deepening into the world of single mindedness.

By single mindedness, what I mean is the one track, intolerant, anti diversity that our brains appear to be being trained into, by what often traces back to source as social media.

It doesn't only track back to social media, it also tracks back to certain public speakers, those of which who rightly so, hold their own beliefs and value set in the world, but instead of keeping those various laundries at home on the drying rail amongst friends and family sharing a cup of tea and a biscuit, they are taken out in front of great audiences both in person and online, with the intention of letting people know that their view is the only one that matters.

The problem with that is where some people in the audience have a tendency towards hate, and in many ways would like to act out that hate as a form of completion in their lives to please a specific person, being, or god. They really just want to please themselves.

Beliefs of people are one thing, but when they are pushed upon others as the “right” way above others personal will, then what we are dealing with is a person who wants to radicalise others into their own ideas about how life is to be lived.

Most of the obvious people who do this in the public eye are acting under the guise of religion. They are permitted to be there because they tout the religion as the reasoning behind their thinking, but looking at them all it is easy to see they are simply incredibly old fashioned. They, powerless in a rapidly changed, and still changing world, are struggling to grasp with the realities that they now find themselves in and perhaps have deep, survival based needs to make the modern world that they now find themselves in even more evil than it ever has been.. even though we come from a time where the iron age was probably as gruesome as it gets, and open incest is catalogued in their written histories.

Despite all of our efforts to be beautiful in the world, inclusive and if we like, engaging in of all of our individual, creative worlds, hate will preside both in the overground and the underground, but at least in one projection I can see high potential for the old fashioned overground to simply die out as the arrow of time continues to direct us all ever onward, and onward’s :)

Public speakers who preach hate trickle down their one track ideas to the next generations, but the beauty is that each generation waters it down before the hate it becomes nothing, non existent.

May you all be beautifully blessed, and sending extra massive love to the trans community and all those creating with genders, non genders, roles, and identities right now.

The ‘Goodness’ Mask of Controlling Behaviour.

I feel like were in a sort of new era of controlling behaviour, an era that acts in a deeply masked way making it difficult to see the original cause for what it really is.

Sure, activism is fantastic, but as someone who is looking for it, I cannot help but spot the bits in activism that seek to change things, claiming to be for the best, natural outcomes, when really there is a high stake of control involved where things ‘should’ be done in the way that they say, because the other way is entirely evil, substandard, or plain old wrong when it is just not necessary.

This type of behaviour is often seen in mental health diagnostics, where others are wrong and they are right, that everybody else is wrong and should be doing things in only the way that the ‘dictator’ for lack of a better word, see’s things as correctly being done.

I don’t think any of us needs much of a pointer on what that means for society as a whole.

Controlling behaviour can show up as something ‘good’ being put out, for the benefit of mankind and it’s fellow nature, but in this way it is simple pretentiousness for the masses toward some internal process of purpose, one that is masked and is originally called control.

There are many things that we cannot, and should not control and have control over, one of those in my eyes are some parts of nature.. all life forms included.

The shaping and landscaping of Earth is part of what we do as creators, and our mere existence plays a role in how the surrounding life changes, evolves, and shapes itself, but should we be having a hand in it all?

I don’t think so. Not all of it.

Deserts are dry and arid for a reason, altering them to contain lakes and water spaces seems an irrational placement that would change our ecosphere with unsavoury effects.

Activists wish to change the current cycles of land which are in their not so pretty phase into a forced cycle of forestation, and people are crashing their space junk into the moon just to make a bit of history in their name for future times, which may not be in any books.

We are messing with things beyond our scope, sometimes with good intention, not realising that most natural cycles really can and should be left alone. In many cases, some things just cannot be forced without terrible consequence.

Perhaps one day we will learn to leave some things be.

Be vigilant, and be your own boss on things :-)

Controlling Behaviour: The Internet, Personal Boundaries and Self Development.

Spotting controlling behaviour in people has never been as transparent to the general public as it is at the moment. 

At the risk of sounding like one of those dodgy one tip to lose tummy fat web ad’s, the one big sign that gives people away is this: if a person has any thing to say about another person having had a Covid-19 vaccine or not.

Anyone (other than authorities such as the government, scientists, etc) that has an opinion about another persons vaccination status is openly displaying some fairly controlling behaviour.

Another persons vaccine status and decision on their body is really nobody else’s business but the individuals, and when I see people coming out with terms like “un-vaccinated people are selfish”, “un-vaccinated people should lose their right to healthcare”, I realise that I feel so uncomfortable about it due to how dreadful pushing an opinion on others really is. It is akin to extremism, but has another air to it that I cannot quite pin down yet. 

Questioning helped get me through.

Did we have this sort of attitude with other vaccinations?

In the unfortunate divide that has been created, what is different?

I’ll tell ya what I think at least. The difference is, social media / internet use.

People do not seem to understand how the information that we take in, scrolling through feeds and streams of it, shapes our own realities drastically more than the every day user would like to think. Yes we can curate things but we only have to take a quick glance at how politics and even BTS seeped into the lives of those who otherwise would not be interested.

Many people also do not have knowledge of things like Social Contagion, Collective Behaviour and the quietly insidious effects that these can wield on our own free agency.

Boundary busting, isn't it?

Plenty of us either mindful of, just learning, or adept at keeping personal boundaries intact can remain oblivious to those boundaries that we allow to be crossed online. Just by logging into an open text messaging service to the entire globe, such as Twitter, we gladly expose ourselves to the world of almost everything, trolling, hate crime, and other shitty stuff included. Many of us are already angry about being burned by companies like Facebook, a place where almost the entire content of lives and families were uploaded without question.

They were trusted. None of us knew.

Luckily, boundaries can be reinstated, but that almost always takes a bit of a shock to the system in realising that very quietly, without our realising, our boundaries were being crossed, and we may have been taking that into our everyday lives, with some being taught that boundary evasion is okay on both sides of the coin, being the crosser or the crossed.

The question we all have to ask ourselves is exactly that, is it ever okay to cross boundaries either way, both offline and online?. Asking ourselves this question can help us see where we are in terms of personal growth and whether we really are working towards a better society all round for humanity.

Keep being amazing :-)

Narcissistic Trait lists: A Dangerous Corner of the Web.

The popularity of narcissistic traits on the web looks like it is at it’s peak right now, comments all over sites like Quora and Reddit, forums, websites and even Twitter “specialists” are everywhere, but not all of the information given is accurate. Although some information is completely valid for an experiencer of narcissistic abuse who is writing of exactly that, their own experience, some people are just there to suck up a loyal following who will pay them for advice, follow them on social media, and provide them with the public likes, re-tweets, and adulation that they need. Notice anything here?

Narcissistic behaviour is not something that can be diagnosed by the general public, in fact, it should never be so, but spotting a narcissist is a great way to keep ourselves safe from their careless behaviour, so what is the work around? How can we, as individuals, not get caught up in the programmed behaviour that is being set out by people posting information that may not apply to all, whilst also keeping ourselves safe from unnecessary crap?

There are a few basic things about narcissistic behaviour that can be pointed out as fact for many of them, although these will be interchangeable, and and entire context should be applied for the individual in question. Additionally, nobody can escape the fact that many narcissists do scour information on the web to train themselves into known passive, submissive, readily acceptable, or caring body language and behaviours, but be assured that this is not to self improve their own narcissism and become more compassionate towards others, it is just another way for the narcissistic person to net people in and “take them for fools” - that’s their words not mine by the way heh.

If you, the reader, have had trouble with many narcissists before, you will be a little more equipped because it is likely that you may have noticed some narcissistic patterns or other repeating across the board already. I have noticed some in my own experiences, which is why I can post you the following short few things which I call a The Skeleton. I call it The Skeleton because this is the framework that the narcissist is operating on in basic terms across the board, and it is where many of their further behaviours spring from. Noticing a skeleton has helped me get to the real reasons for a persons woes on many occasion, so here goes.. but remember, not everybody who does one of these things is narcissistic, there is always a wider context and individuality that must be taken into account.

Intense Staring

Narcissists do this, but in a way that is bare faced odd. It will be uncomfortable for you, and strange. This is because you are two things; prey, and someone that they are trying to work out so that they can get in.

Inferiority and Superiority Imbalance

Either one will be out on display, although usually it is superiority. Superiority is an attempt to cover the painfully inferior feeling person beneath, although if you are seasoned you may see the inferiority first.

Lies and Dishonesty

Lies will be obvious, repeated, and quite courageous.. too courageous in fact, as if they even believe in what they are saying themselves. Dishonesty and lies will occur in just about anything, although it usually always serves a narcissists self protection, greater plot, or protecting such a plot from being exposed.

Unreciprocated Use of People

Narcissists must find a beneficial use for each person, or else they are useless and to be discarded. This is wildly different from a healthy relationship where people get their needs met because narcissists are in for what they can get alone and get nothing from reciprocating, unless it is still early days and they are trying to win you over.

Stupified Eye Response and Facial Expression

If you catch it, there will be times where the narcissist (and also a psychopath whilst we’re here) will have a look on their face that looks like they have just had a few swift blows to the head with a baseball bat. It usually occurs when they are incensed about something, which more is often that their current plot is not working out or has not worked out entirely.

So that’s The Skeleton from my perspective, although remember, there is always a wider context and individuality that must be taken into account when noticing these signs.

Many people read similar trait lists and find something in everyone, like a one size fits all, and to me that is quite a dangerous corner that we have been programming ourselves to sit in. The truth is that narcissism is a scale, anyone can become one given the correct surroundings and experiences, and that there is such a thing as healthy narcissism which we all must have a little of in the world.

I will be posting again about The Skeleton, breaking down some interesting points about it so if you're interested, keep a look out for that.

Stay awesome :)

© Thursday 10th Feb 2022

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