Almost all Religions and Spiritual Disciplines offer some form of cleaning ritual or "forgiveness" mechanism.

We humans like to get rid of nasty memories and guilt complexes. We would like to erase our failures in our past …

Unless we invent a time machine we can’t undo the past. So we use a "psychic trick" and "allow" ourselves to find peace and forgiveness for what we have done.

But to make the "trick" to feel real we add some pain and effort to the penance. "No pain, no gain!" they say.

So we do extra prayer, stand in ice cold water, run through flames, walk some long "spiritual paths", do self-flagellation or do some other punishment.

The "washing" usually doesn’t really help those you have wronged or fix the situation you are ashamed of – but it tricks our psyche into thinking we are "clean" now.

"Washing" away your sins in this way is just a lame excuse to really learn from your failures and confront the consequences. Religious or spiritual self-flagellation is no substitute for confronting your failures and the hard work of growing beyond your limits.

Growth and learning can be painful, but don’t confuse pain with growing beyond your pitiful excuses.

Every year the same procedure: people make New Years Resolutions and pretty quickly fail them. Stop Smoking? Get fitter? Get smarter, nicer … whatever …

It’s basically willpower versus habit.

But most of us have not especially well trained mind or huge amounts of willpower to overcome intellectual, emotional or physical bad habits or even addictions.

The old mental image of the well trodden path is the best way to explain why resolution most of the time fail.

Bad habits as well as good ones are psychic or physical patterns we repeat. The more established and familiar the pattern is – the easier we can repeat it.

I will change … of at least I’ll try and fail like last years and the year before … 

It’s like any skill or behaviour: the more you practice that habit the deeper it is ingrained in your psyche or body. Like reading or throwing a Frisbee practice makes perfect or creates a hellish habit that is harder and harder to escape.

Often we follow these well trodden paths on auto pilot. We can observe ourselves often doing stupid or terrible things to ourselves – often in full knowledge and awareness that we are doing it RIGHT NOW.

The bad habit has embedded itself so deeply into our psyche or body that we can follow it blindly and are zombies of something we more and more hate.

Do you really think you simply can stop such a bad habit but saying to yourself I will change? You already have the awareness you are doing something bad while you are doing it – and you are unable to stop yourself while doing it!

The strategy to simply make a resolution will mostly fail. It is the wrong "tool" to escape from the "bad path" in your psyche!

How will escape a bad "path" if you don’t have a new one?

So you failed again? Understand the power of bad patterns before you try to change …

Imagine being a Jogger and you have a course you have been running for years. You know every inch of the way, the timing, your own capabilities and each obstacle. But also the pleasure of that very course …

A new course is to be learned through practice and experiencing it again and again. The same applies to retraining new patterns in your behaviour.

Instead of wasting a lot of time and energy to fight a bad old pattern, pour these resources into creating and strengthening a new one. It will help your "self improvement" more to experience (small) successes instead of constant and well ingrained failures.

Be patient! Be persistent!

Oh sweet sweet fucking success!

To build new patterns takes time. Failures will happen and that’s a good thing too. You can use these "failures" to measure how well the new pattern is already established. Obviously over time you should less and less fall back to bad old behaviour …

"The Difference between Life and Art is Art is more bearable" - Charles Bukowski

When you clone yourself only some of your genes will live on, but these have nothing to do with your personality or achievements.

You will simply die as everybody else no matter how many kids you produce.

You make mistakes, I make mistakes. Mistakes are essential for learning and especially curious or laborious people make many of them.

But how to handle mistakes – especially those in a public situation?

The first question what this mistake means to yourself: did you repeat an old mistake or indulge a bad habit? In that case the usual reaction is anger or frustration with yourself. This is of course the wrong way: you should rather ask yourself what is the "motivation" behind the "repeat". Unless you know what drives you to do the same mistakes over and over again than you can’t change …

Was the mistake unpredictable? Than have a laugh and try again.

But what if it was predictable and you just didn’t care enough to be cautions or too lazy to prepare yourself properly. Once again don’t use the "excuse" anger to punish yourself – and again ask yourself what was the motivation for your carelessness.

Social connection are usually "chains" of personal commitments of loyalty, association and love.

So if you "fail" in public you yank that "chain" – and all people connected to it will be connected.

Isn’t it strange that we are suddenly part of a failure or the blame game although we didn’t do anything?

And why does a mistake make the presence of observers, friends and enemies it even worse? Why do we gloat? Why do we feel Schadenfreude? Why do other people’s failure fill us rather with glee and happiness instead of compassion?

Watch this video and be honest about your first reaction:

Now you have been the observer, but what if that crash had happened to you?

It really depends on your independence from the crowd and self-confidence if you can shrug of the mistakes.

To feel embarrassed by your or other people’s mistake it an "emotional decision" – unlike the emotion fear it is not hardwired into our brains to protect us.

Sure – there is "stress" that is generated by a mistake – falling down will flush you with hormones and race your pulse. But still there is no need to feel embarrassed.

The same is true for anger after a mistake. Often people (mostly guys) are angry and get aggressive towards others and objects when they "fail":

Once again this reaction to a mistake could be handled differently. Because having such a lack of emotional intelligence is another social failure and can only lead to more stress.

So when a mistake happens and there is no further "danger" take a step back and a deep breath. Calm yourself if you feel stressed … take some more deep breaths in case you are flooded with stress. Give your body and your mind time to handle what happened.

Try to understand what just happened and improve the situation. Keep your composure or laugh about it.

We humans are not really brave. We do not laugh in the face of danger, we simply choose to be ignorant and hope that the problem will go away.

Ignorance seems to be a psychological mechanism to help us to cope with fear and anxiety – we simply choose to filter danger out and hope for the best.

Many personal or big catastrophes’ could have been avoided with more care or more fear. Fear is a good warning signal and fear can be overcome by being smarter and better prepared.

It makes no sense living on a volcano and hoping it won’t explode, the smart thing would be to move away. But tell that to the people of Pompeii.

I think we shouldn’t give a crap about that dualistic thinking of male and female. Even tough guys should explore all aspects of human existence – even that of Girls.

Girlie-Men are cool!

No going back to living a "natural life" is not the solution for humanity. Many Africans live quite natural – and therefore starve, face terrible sickness, are uneducated and have shot life expectancies. That’s not what I would call a good life!

We develop human culture and technology to survive and have better, safer, healthier and longer lives.

And you can’t feed six billion people just with a hunting and ploughing the fields with horses.

Our psyche loves simple solutions to nagging problems and insecurities. Mythology and fairy tales are full of miracle cures and magic items that solve any problem.

Like little kids we hunger for the Überfather or Übermother to fix the universe for us. Once we grow up many project their childhood inability to cope with reality onto a mystical being or deity and ask them to fix life for them.

Because we mere mortals can’t connect to the heavens and the gods we hope for magic items that are blessed by our imaginary friends in high places. Magic amulets or pants that protect us from harm, bones from saints and all that kind of rubbish.

It’s wishful thinking and idol worshipping at it’s best.

And if a magic item didn’t work as advertised we blame ourselves for being not "worthy" enough to invoke it’s powers.

Nietzsche has killed all Gods for us (again – because some Greek Philosophers had done that before).

Some religious people have argued that now Humanity feels lost – because we are no longer part of divine plan or connected to a great power.

Rubbish!

We are now liberated from the mental constraint of following some imaginary being’s plans. And there are no longer any excuses to really take responsibility for your OWN life. Don’t make up excuses, don’t follow any rules made up by ancient people. You have develop your own moral and social compass.

But even many religious texts emphasize each individuals liberty to choose in the face of God. And based on your decisions and deeds you will be judged. You find these judgement metaphors in Egyptian sacred texts as well as in Christianity and the idea of Reincarnation based on your Karma of your former life in many eastern religions.

Don’t be sheep: don’t follow social, cultural or religious rules or pressure to play it safe. This is your life now and head straight for it.

If you want to follow certain rules then do so, because YOU decided to do so. Many moral ideas make sense, no matter if you think they are based on ethereal religion or down to earth common sense.

But many conventions or consensus is simply rubbish and made for sheep. Don’t be one …

I wouldn’t call it “Love” – it’s called obsession or being a control freak Darling!

There is no such thing as a "neutral" design – or a design without a message. Design always happens in a context and is based on decisions against or for something.

Many designers love to masturbate to "simple beauty", but even there is a message and a judgment involved.

Just making something nice and honest is boring and naive. Take a stand you touchy designers and don’t hide behind the thin veil of aesthetics and beauty.

As much as I dislike advertising at least it doesn’t hide it’s true intentions of trying to sell you something.

Click image to watch this little paradise.

The stressed modern homo digitalis always seems to dream about escaping his environment and enter a state of eternal bliss by living on a lonely island.

Apart from lacking the skills of growing his own food and total dependency on technology what do people expect to find?

Enjoyable nothingness? No friends, no consumerism, no Facebook and no mating?

Most people wouldn’t last a month without their "normal" life in such an Island.

Instead of having such wet dreams about being disconnected people should try to evolve, learn to deal with stress and create the lifestyle they want.

And who said that life would be without stress? Especially people who have "nothing" (poverty) are the most stressed.

Learn to tame your mind and desires, reach out for emotional maturity and you will reach an inner island that is well connected, refreshing and most satisfying.

There is a big difference between engaged, being excited and being passionate about something.

Most people simply tolerate life, but only a view people know their passion and even fewer follow it.

Do you know your passion? And do you follow it?

Don’t wait for the Knight or other fantasies little princess or you  may wait for a very, very, very long time …

It is amazing that there still is so much conformity in our modern societies.

Although we have in our western societies the highest degree of personal and spiritual freedom, most people seem "to buy their minds" from the same vendors?

But thinking, building character and even solid opinions seem a luxury these days. Sure – it all costs time and most people rather "spend" theirs on entertaining themselves.

The mass media also is too blame, but not as you might think. Especially in Europe the state owned channels were always on a mission to educate the masses. They always tried to instill variety and complexity into these heads.

But TV has an inherent systematic flaw: it repeats itself and the currently accepted "group think" again and again. So even when they show variety the most repeated version of reality will be accepted as the "best" one.

Societies have always been driven my mental, moral, religious and scientific consensus, but today’s consumerist attitude provides very poor soil for the brilliance of the human mind.

Which is such a shame – since we live in a day and age where we so many people could easily create and share great mental fireworks … 

Confusion seems to be a pretty natural state of mind for most people. Isn’t it great that our own mind can confuse itself?

But let’s look at the “confusion” from another perspective: Why does our mind (therefore you yourself) decide to confuse itself instead of operating in clarity and good spirit?

Unless the outside “stresses” us to act – there is no need to cloud our minds ourselves. 

So why do we choose to fuck ourselves up?

Is it just a simple excuse not to get things done? Do we love to be drama queens? Are we avoiding to face the real problems and make up neurotic small ones to keep us from the real ones?

Telegrapgh.co.uk: Photographing meals ‘could help weight loss’

Slimmers began to eat healthier food when they were asked to take a picture of what they were eating, scientists found.

The pictures appear to have concentrated the dieters’s mind at just the right time, before they were about to eat, the researchers who carried out the study believe.

Photographs were also more effective at encouraging volunteers to watch what they ate than traditional written food diaries.

To test if encouraging slimmers to photograph everything they eat might also encourage them to change their diet, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked

43 people to record what they ate for one week in pictures as well as in words.

When the volunteers were later quizzed the photo diary appeared more effective at encouraging them to change their eating habits to more healthy alternatives.

The photographs also acted as a powerful reminder of any snacking binges, the researchers found.

If this helps I’ll make even TWO snaps of every bite I’ll take.

By the way: the Mousse and the Sacher Torte were brilliant – but so far I have experienced no weightloss from the photos I have taken.

Since I work in design myself I can only applaud the statement above. Too many times I have met and worked with pretentious designers, who really think design can change the world.

But usually they never lift a finger to help other people – they are just obsessed with “pretty” or “cool” stuff.

Bah!

Size matters. Learning matters. Learning in small steps can be as effective and giant leaps.

It doesn’t matter if you are young or old – learning new stuff is always hard. The main difference is that a younger brain is better wired for learning – but this doesn’t mean you can’t learn just because you are older. With more experience in learning new stuff and knowing yourself learning should be easier.

Isn’t it odd: sometimes our self doesn’t feel like itself. Our mind perceives itself as splintered or disconnected.

The mind has the great ability to put itself into different internal “sections” or “boxes” – for example it can put “pain” and “bad memories” away so the mind can cope with daily life without going insane.

But this also a problem – we sometimes feel disconnected from all our parts. The expression “pulling yourself together” is an universal expression and a state of mind experienced by everyone.

But where is that lever or what’s the trick to pull yourself together? By relaxing in a hot tube? Doing something “nice”? Loosing yourself in mindless entertainment?

So – what’s your trick?

You know the moment well – just before you drift of to sleep you are in a twilight zone: you normal ego is still there, but not as strong as during daytime. You haven’t drifted off into dreamland but your ego is weaker as usual.

What are you thinking at the moment? What kind of images are rushing through your weakened mind? What is it that you really want or think – now that your barriers are lowered or weaker? Can you peek behind your own mask and see your true self?

Most environmentalism is only about us – and not the animals and not our planet. It’s a war of ideas and ideals – and not about our planet. One group of people trying to dictate how another group of people is supposed to behave.

But would you feed yourself to a polar bear to save him?

Would you kill yourself, when you are old and useless – just to reduce the human footprint?

They all say be loose our innocence or something else when we grow up. There seems to be a slow transformation from a small happy camper to a miserable corporate slave.

But is it really true?

Childhoods are not as happy as they are often portrait by adults. The daily challenge of learning and being rather totally without about almost everything must be pretty frustrating. Kids are often frustrated and overwhelmed by “our” world. And being small, weak and being unable to create your own life it’s pretty unnerving too.

Plus your body and mind constantly changes, hormones drive you mad and illnesses are constantly looking out to infect or kill you. With every change and new thing they learn kids face a new thing they can worry about – and they do. There is no (mental) innocence in the life of kids, but there is a lot of stress and panic. Kids certainly can worry about as many things as adults do.

This is pure stress – so we should be rather happy that kids can have “innocent fun” and enjoy themselves by playing rather stupid games (while often still learning while playing).

What is this? Maybe just a thing? Or maybe a funny toy? Or something that can scare or even kill you?

Being a kid is a lot of stress, growing up a huge challenge without any real goal or explanation. Suddenly you are big and an adult. People demand from you that you choose your path and job for life without knowing what life is.

There is no such stages in our early life’s, when we are without stress and under constant demands from the outside to grow, learn and adapt. There is no time for innocence, nor do kids have any use for such a “concept”. They already have enough to worry about.

Life is not a box of chocolate, but a fucking long buffet – that you might enjoy or maybe not.

Only as an adult you can create your own life and your own niche to get control our your own cosmos.

But not many adults own their own life’s. Instead they develop a deep nostalgia about being innocent WITHOUT being able to control their own life’s. Many people are deeply scared by having freedom and the ability to make a choice.

The older we get, the wiser we are supposed to be. As an old or older person your are not supposed to make a fresh start and start a new life … you can’t cut away age or memories. So regrowing a new self is almost impossible … or is it?

Isn’t it just a decision of our old ego to cling to it’s memories and old pain that is keeping us from refreshing ourselfes?

If the past is really the past – why are you clinging to it in your mind and heart? Do you fear loosing yourself when you simply cut away the old shrub to get more light and breathing space?

It might be painful to let go – but it makes no sense to just cling to memories of a reality that is long gone?

Grow now, stay green and fresh.

Why are modern males so obsessed with their cell phones, notebooks, desktop PCs, iPods and all these other electronic gadgets?

Some time ago I had a short look at the Ladies and their relationship to technology (Girly tech and why pink is for pussy). I think it’s only fair to look at myself and the Technolust of my gender.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once we all were young, innocent, clueless, small und without any real knowledge. Dreaming comes easy. Fun seems to be everywhere. Angst is also everywhere. But we get help and we get protected. People ask us what we want to be when we grow up.

Then we get educated, civilized and grow up. Fun gets more complicated. Angst gets more complicated. We get less help and are supposed to help ourselves. Nobody asks us now what we want from life. We are supposed to know it already.

Where is the time to find out about our goals and what we want from life – before it gets too serious and before it is too late?!

What does it mean to be "lonely"?

Does it mean people treat you like an outcast – and you are pushed a side and a lone person.

Does it mean you run away from people – because you dislike them or you’re unable to connect to them.

Does it mean you are always at the wrong place with nobody to connect?

Does it mean nobody understands you or nobody can follow your ideas, mindset or attitude?

What does it mean to be lonely and is it real?

Hollywood has long lost it’s hunger for musical, simple romance and naive Kitsch. The great dance movies of the 1940’s are long forgotten.

But don’t despair: another booming nation is willing to fill your head & heart with naive Kitsch.

India’s romantic  Kitsch crap is making people all over the globe. It’s simple mixture of sing & dance, naive cliches and archetypes right out of fairy tales are easy to understand for those craving some happy and brainless entertainment.

These variations lack all the cynicism and twisted modern identity crises of modern romance and most western romantic Kitsch. In India woman are still old fashioned woman and behave like a proper princess.

So audiences not only crave Kitsch romance, but simplicity itself. Why not move to Saudi Arabia instead, where traditional roles are strictly enforced?

I think before watching any fundamental (Christian) preacher or politician one should always watch this very video.

Many people always say they know what God or Jesus wants from them or us. But what God wanted in the old testament is pretty different from what Jesus and his Daddy later propagated in the new one.

So maybe now 2000 years later there might be some new additions as well?

During the breakaway from religious (Christian) world many philosophers loved to compare our world to a giant clockwork driven by natural principles instead of following a divine plan.

This is attitude is quite understandable, since the new scientific approach seemed to promise an explanation for everything – everybody expected a perfect system that made sense for anything and everything.

Plus it was also the beginning of the machine age – the production and ever more precise machinery like clocks was all the rage in Europe. So no surprise that the clockwork was the symbol for science and progress – just like we use the computer analogy for how the brain works.

We humans love simplistic analogies to make "stuff" more understandable. Neither religions nor modern mass media likes complexity – they both love simple slogans.

Although Darwin has introduced us to the ideas and evolution and expanded biology into a new realm we still love our "mechanical" images to understand it. For example we love the computer analogy to explain functions of the human brain.

The idea that the universe and everything in it can be explained someday holds the eternal temptation to play Gods ourselves someday. Machines can be easily fixed – at least that implies the analogy.

Biology and Machines alike have to operate in the limited sandbox of physics. But that doesn’t make biological beings like machines. Especially random mutations and natural selection are special "mechanisms" of nature that constantly twist the rules without breaking them.

There is also the ideological struggle if the (human) mind can be explained by a mechanical rule set and recreated in form of artificial intelligence.

Some scientists believe that we humans are predictable machines: we are biological automatons (or Turing Machines) with no real free will at all.

As much as I agree that there are limits to human imagination and the so called "Free Will" – but I very much doubt that creativity and humor can be programmed or recreated.

Machines rules can be adapted to include random elements and have mutations, but mutation is not evolution – just a part of it. And rules for "playing" nice machine music or creating "pleasing" computer art is a simulation of creativity.

All these experiments to make teach machines art and creativity is the back channel: our emotions and thoughts while being artistic or watching a piece of art.

Unless machines are inspired, impressed, confused and disgusted by the creativity of others their works will only be mechanical simulations – "soulless" or "without emotions" so to say.

By experimenting with artificial intelligence we have certainly learned a lot about ourselves – so it’s worth exploring. But let’s get rid of the stupid mechanistic analogies and try to think a bit more complex.

It’s worth the extra effort.

We shouldn’t be afraid of the complexities of the universe and that there is no God or (scientific) creator behind it. Just because we don’t understand everything (yet) doesn’t mean we need to mystify it. Let’s just enjoy it the way it is – and learn more on the way …

Our science and mental models are as much driven by science as they are by our attitudes.

More? Mechanism @ Wikipedia

Your Ikea nesting instinct made you buy the perfect kitchen and you are the perfect wife. You know how to perfectly please everybody. You know how to perfectly organize your perfect life. You read all the perfect books Oprah recommended to be perfect. And your career is going perfect too.

Too bad there is no perfect husband for your perfect fantasy world – and it’s perfectly normal that you are running out of time.

Fertility has a limited shelf life and so does your happiness … don’t waste it on perfection.

Shopping doesn’t make you more attractive or provide any form of therapy, but will make your poorer. The only people who will love your for it are your credit card company and the merchants you bless with your hard earned money …

We are all lazy to some degree – and there is a reason why laziness is a cardinal sin: it kills. But there is laziness and laziness. We all have to learn to enjoy ourselves without guilt. The art of slowness and enjoying life is not laziness – and it’s doesn’t kill anyone if you clean your kitchen not today, but tomorrow.

But you also have to learn to kick your inner pig and set priorities AND act on them. After you have achieved something great or important you two can have a mud bath and enjoy each others company … AFTERWARDS.

You think you are the current top dog? Remember that there always is a bigger dog out there to get you. The only way to win this game is not to indulge in subscribe to the illusion of winners and loosers.

The modern Homo Officium needs some real thrills when he goes on vacation. Corporate life is boring and only real danger can make him feel alive.

That is why such places, bungee jumping and wild water rides are tourist attractions. Danger is the new drug for the mediocre masses to get out of their emotional caves and feel in touch with (a dangerous) reality …

*Thanks to Edosan for the image*

Do you open your mind? Are you an open person? Are you open to new things? Are you well connect?

Of course you are … NOT. We are live in intellectual and emotional bubbles. Our brains are our bubbles – and how much we train, expand and use them.

The question is: even when our brains are limited how much do you use it? No, this is not about the old “we only use 10% of our brain”-myth. It is much more about training and education.

Our brain and the mind within needs to be constantly trained, challenged and cultivated. Brain scans have shown unused brain literally loose capacity and become dull. The mind needs to be sharpened by usage and challenges. Only running “on easy” will dumb you down.

So the questions is now: how much do you open your bubble to let in new, challenging, unknown, uncomfortable and complicated thoughts and tasks? Do you allow “nasty” paradoxes and even painful mind benders into your bubble that will keep your mind fighting and chewing on them – or do you limit your brain and yourself to “easy thinking”?

You have to understand that your mind is only a part of you – a part that needs training and something to challenge it. Regard as your inner dog: give him some yummy bones to chew on, some wild toys to chase around and keep him busy. He will like that!

We all dislike fighting and arguing with other people, co-workers and loved ones. But it’s a necessary part of life.

Most people are stressed out by fights and anger. But like boxing it is a skill that can be learned to reduce the stress and not to waste too much energy. It’s not about anger management, but dealing with stress during a confrontation, making proper arguments, understanding the  physical effects of stress and anger on your body and mind … and getting out of your own “hot head”.

By developing a “conflict culture” and getting to know yourself in hot situations is a benefit to yourself and everybody else. You still can be mad, passionate and intense about your opinions, but you learn how to focus and use your power in a good way to make your point of view clear.

A good fight / argument can be highly stimulation and refreshing – it doesn’t need to be a total disaster for everybody.

Just because you rebel against something or act a bit odd doesn’t make you different. Even amongst rebels, punks and other “outsiders” to the so called system is a certain uniformity and consensus of what is supposed to be different.

Finding your inner child and behaving like an adult idiot doesn’t make you any younger or wiser. Sometimes it is necessary to go back in your memories and heal some old crap. But you should came back and act with the decency and wisdom befitting your actual age. Nobody like big babies.