Tunes can mess with the brain

No. This is not a scientific article, this is merely my opinion. But I think the title has some truth behind it : Music seems to amplify emotions and stick with memories. I never* tried intoxicants and so I cannot really compare it to drugs or alcohol and claim my analogy to be accurate. But it does mess with my emotions and it seems to mess with others’ as well.

Do not get me wrong : music is very enjoyable to hear. The first piece you listen to in a day or two feels amazing. However, when you get to the sixth song you no longer enjoy the music rather you become its puppet : happy music moves you, sad music downs you, but you keep listening to music after music looking for the first hit you get. This is addiction and through a dangerous mean.

Moreover, I cannot seem to think critically or do any useful work with that : these resonant effects of music. I’m not sure if they last for days or if it only takes a couple of hours for the effect to wear off, but I can certainly feel it, quite hard to pinpoint because of how subtle it comes.

In fact, I have sporadically attempted to break from this sort of addiction. And I highly underline the word addiction as I think of it personally, because eventually when you tune in for so long and so much in a typical day of your life, it becomes a reflex. A habit. Then, an addiction.

Do you feel sad? Let’s put up some blues. Do you feel tired? Maybe some jazz. Do you feel puzzled? There is certainly some ominous music for you. Do you feel happy? The catalogue is filled to the brim at your desire.

As I so numerously attempted to cut the cord with the vibrating sinusoidal space of music, I realized this problem generalizes with many things we desire. We are hooked on dopamine. Our brains are hooked on constant stimulation – we can’t see the end of it.

Do not get me wrong – music is a beautiful duality of invention and discovery of and by humans. Birds chirping is a melody to our ears and rightfully so. Poetry is so often empowered with the tunes they hint at. Humans are musical, they get affected by music, and often produce music in the literal or figurative sense. What I want to highlight is a certain overdose. Not a drop that spills the cup, but a cup that keeps getting filled and spilled, that its water on the bottom starts to get murky as it never breathes.

Next time you listen to a piece of music, consider this : are you actually listening to the tunes and rhythms, or is your brain being mindlessly tiredly stimulated for the one hundredth time without true appreciation of what the music offers? If it’s the latter, maybe a short break can help you better appreciate the tunes later on.

* not on a regular basis allowing me to get a conclusion out of it really. Or sometimes actually never.

Attractive Posts

Humans are easily attracted by beautiful text, beautiful speech and anything harmonious in communication. Ding dong, era of the internet, and humans are attracted by well made posts. Though it is a bit eerie : your beautiful sentimental model of the world is being influenced by carefully crafted posts aiming to either change your ideas or just gain more money through ads. What about it then?

Ad-oriented posts

Yup, the clear obvious example of social media posts aiming to sell you a product. This goes from small brand endorsements hiding within the text (by mentioning the brand name or so) up to clear unrelated parts of the post (generally the case for videos) showing the product being used. Ad-oriented posts have one clear goal : make money by shifting your attention to that product, even slightly, or by inserting it in the back of your head. What’s phenomenal about this, is that social media figures mastered their audience and their manipulation so well that it has sometimes become hard to differentiate between an ad-driven post and a regular one, if the latter even exists.

Influence-oriented posts

Here are the more normal ones : the posts aiming to change your opinion on a certain topic, through arguments, examples, so on and so forth. Though these posts get critical during important events like elections, impeachments, reacting to police brutality… They can aim for good as well as aim for evil. The most influence they have on people is when people are drugged by social media (as they usually are, unaware) or drugged by hate/dogma… If you want to be safe from them : never take them for granted right away, rather read them when you’re focused and aware, and let the ideas sink in a few days before you can judge their high value or their stupidity.

Image-building post

In a nutshell : people love showing off and building a good image of themselves in front of their communities. Most do anyway. And people will push so far to grab your attention just because they want it, they define themselves through it. Examples are not lacking here, it’s just that saying names is taboo, we can only directly point fingers at big companies (or orange-haired presidents) in here. Nonetheless they’ll attempt to build an image of themselves they consider perfect. Whether it was the image of “open-minded unbiased non-racist equality supporter” for that community or “conservative supremacist xenophobic nationalist” for that, other, community. Here double-faced people will have the hardest time satisfying both communities. Don’t ask me my own preferences! This phenomenon exists even within the Linux community (The Gentoo humble users stereotype, in contrast to Arch Linux showoff users stereotype). (PS : I love the Linux community.)

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There are more categories where you can fit attractive posts in. I’m just using my own terminology here. The interesting posts are usually those not seeking attentions. Picture the silent scientist doing his work and publishing his papers if you will. Posts not seeking attention from foreign communities but suddenly gaining it tend to be more awesome than posts seeking the attention of most wallet-holding people. Exceptions are more common than you think though (that is because my model is imperfect.)

Have a great day!

Struggle for motivation

Away from depression and sadness which are clear causes of this motivational void, I sometimes find myself unwilling to do anything useful, nor anything fun.

What I mean by lack of motivation :

Say I have an exam to work for. Many people struggle with getting motivated to study unless they’re pushed to it, are interested by the subject or simply better organized and have more courage. By courage I mean that weird force you have to work, whether inspired by Diderot’s works that you have to read about, or completely careless regarding romanticism, baroque or any of the art shenanigans people force you to look at and evaluate your whole worth, knowledge and wisdom on while you’re totally uninterested and uninspired and irretated of that attitude they…. okay fine I’ll end that rant here. But for me, lack of motivation is when it is so hard to
push myself  to do something and then actually do it, while not being particularly sad, depressed, frightened or emotionally unresponsive.

You could say my lack of motivation is a fancy way to say laziness. Actually it might as well be so. I’m recently overly lazy. Vacations are supposed to be filled with excitement and enthusiasm for me : lately I’ve just acted lazily during them. And when they are finished, you get that eerie realisation that you wasted 90% of your holiday’s free time doing nothing. If you consider that a waste of course (I do).

What I think is (are) the reason(s) :

Multiple factors. Yeah yeah, like any person writing a blog post on the causes of some phenomenon he’s experiencing, I’m giving you a list. So expected of me. I’ll try to list them following degree of importance at least then.

• Social media! Particularly YouTube, where I spent a humongous load of time watching vlogs, pranks and confessions in various different channels in many languages, and dialects of languages, and some music videos as well. One bright side to this is that I learned some things about common life, being the hermit I am studying at uni 24/7. Such as how families work, how horrible work contracts are, where life is good and awesome and where I can’t buy anything from the internet, what beauty standards are and what they’re not, stereotypes and how true they are, or how wrong. How much lies shape social media, how dumb some followers are and how naïve some communities. How certain crimes go virtually unnoticed despite being recorded, while the anniversary of a dog can get millions of people’s interest. The dark side for me though is that I lost focus. I was unable to focus on what I’m doing, and constantly thinking in terms of what I watched a few seconds ago. It was like a constant noise generator in the back of my head that I keep fueling with hours of my time wasted on it. It also lead to me kind-of lying about what I’m doing, hiding things, procrastinating like never before … Though my interest in them is related to me realising late many aspects of life that I simply ignored before.
• Shift in interest. One of my biggest worries growing up is ending up with one horrible money hoarding job that I can’t easily leave because of the contract or the monopoly the employer holds, because I constantly change my prime interests. I go back to things I love, true, but I don’t like sticking to one hobby (again it’s about interests and hobbies, and not crutial hygienic habits for example) And right now during my studies, my brain struggles to wire to what I’m learning. Now as I’m writing it’s improving slightly I hope, but the point remains. Nonetheless a well wired brain is better than a busy mind.
• A busy mind : When you start living alone and figuring out your life solo mode, you really start thinking of a billion things and worrying about every next step (unless you’ve prepared for that well on your own). My mind will keep on thinking of prevention methods or backup plans to any major life event, including deaths, wars, rising xenophobia, unstable employment, a stable source of income, broken friendships and bonds, unstable relationships … This happens when you suddenly transition from being taken cared of by your family and friends, to straight up roaming the ruthless world. This is also the first time I realized how some privileges are unnoticed. I’ve had mine and honestly wished I had some of others’ that make life so easy. A source of motivation would be to break this wall of fears and ungiven privileges and see yourself progress. I’m talking in cryptic terms because I’m not sure I want to share the privileges I wish I had or what struggles I might be facing. But that’s my brain’s noise after leaving home, sweet home.
• Personal reasons.

Remedies ?

This post is so classically structured, you don’t have to say it, I fully agree lol.

My real remedies are quite personal. But they do require admitting that there is a problem, that it’s not normal and that the clock is ticking faster than it should, and then admit that you need a solution for it, whether it was through asking help from someone, going to a psychiatrist or simply working out. But you have to tackle the problem directly. Trying to “replace” it can work, but if you are not prepared for the next possible storm of unmotivated clouds and uncreative ideas, trying to leave that state of mind would be a hassle.

A big chunk of my current prototypes of remedies for this storm is to crack down on all the causes I mentioned before. Have priorities set (study, good health, and fun) and take down the distraction sources, everything that is messing with my brain and rendering my thought unclear, such as social media. Ideally I’d limit my use of it mindfully, but because that is hard and I constantly tend to go down the mass media consumption swirl, I try to block it completely, rewire my brain during a week or two on what I like to watch and see, then go back to it if I’m confident I won’t go down that same whirlpool again

A silver rule is to not decide what you want overnight, but leave the idea incubate a few days even weeks depending on the importance of it, and then decide. Same goes to what I should watch and consume, or read.

And no. No conclusions. Just to make sure it’s not a classic Intro-Content-Outro form. I decide what I write afterall.

Facebook and Wasting Time

It seems to me that one of humans’ worst facts is their wasting of time. Some waste time sleeping more than they need, others waste it on 1000+ episodes of Conan. Many watch useless tv shows and there are even worse ways people waste time. I’m not here to be a devil and detail more ways to waste time, I’m here to make you feel guilty if you ever did so. In this post I’ll just try and make facebook users guilty (don’t hate me after this please).

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To facebook lovers

I’ll assume (and be gentle with numbers) that you spend an average of 50 minutes on facebook a day. Let’s say you’ve been a facebook addict since 2012. Search google : “Days since january 1 2012”. It says at this current date where I’m writing this : 2033 days. Now, multiply 50 minutes by 2033, you get 101650 minutes of your life wasted on facebook. Alright I’ll be more precise : 101650 minutes on facebook means nearly 1694 hours on facebook NONSTOP. Or more scaringly 70 days of your life, with no other idea but facebook.

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I hope you don’t hate me after this, but people need to be conscious of this. People are being very unproductive due to this issue. I hope you enjoyed reading !

Be the lookfree mind

They look at you, for your color and rights
They care less, if you’re one of those sides
And you ask yourself if they look at hearts
Or they just prefer to keep on their barks

Never get your heart
Close to their darts
Leave them and start
denying this clart

try to tell them “we still match”
if they say “we should detach”
stay away and try to reach
the others with better speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why limits prepares for imagination

We all seem to think that the more limited your domain is, the less capable you are of imagining something innovative, well I’m here to tell you imagination can’t exist without limits, and why the more flexible the limits, the less creative you get.

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Example thought :

Imagine you just finished a vacation of yours at some island, and you were enjoying the souvenir you’ll have of this natural wonder. But before you leave , they put in an isolated black room. You’ve been told you have 1 hour to do something innovative, and you can ask them for anything and they’ll give it to you. The same thing was happening for many other tourists that are yet to leave the island, but no one can see another.
In this example, you are very likely not to have any brilliant idea for something, and it is probable that the majority of the tourists did bad too. Why ? ( also, if a brilliant idea popped in your mind as you’re reading tell me in the comments below ).

The probable reasoning :

Here’s what I think about this : if you don’t know what domain to think of, your brain just wonder endlessly with no fixed point to rotate around. If the participants were told to write something  innovative it’s probable that a lot of them would of done something nice and entertaining. Better : if you tell them to write about the city they lived in, they’ll have more space to talk about, more things to write. If you even detail the subject of writing and tell them to write about how well people are living in the city they inhabit, you would see more creativity.
If you build a house, you need support for the material to stand on. If you just build with only bear ground in front of you, you won’t be able to build a good looking roof. Our imagination works in a very similar way : you need a subject in order to detail the your imagination. Yes, you can do something special when you’re free to choose, but being told what to do is probably way more effective and easier for our brains.

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That’s the topic for today. What idea popped in your mind when reading the island leaving problem? Either way, this is something nice to think of when wanting to get out of boredom. First : you need a subject, then things move the way they should.

Prison of Life

My siblings in humanity, don’t ever be fooled
By the seducing powers within this dying world
Don’t waste time consuming with heedless thought
What others spent years on to share with the rest
Others are trying, for how long have they fought
As if people don’t like others to get over the best

You need to use what you learnt to advance
We didn’t get brains just to waste them hence
That’s why, we should fix our paths and goals
And make sure we use time to help the ill
Act like ants and have affection for other souls
Thus make sure society remains still

Why Justice is better than Equality

Although, some people already think of equality in terms of justice, but if we go back to the definition of the two, a distinct feeling about each of them may make you wonder whether we should fight for Justice or Equality. I’ll give my opinion on this topic while being eager to see your personal opinions in the comments.

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So what is equality ?

I will speak according to the root of the word, which is ‘equal’ or ‘equivalent’. For example, you should give equal love to your children. This is very close to having two mathematical expressions, and saying if they do the same thing or not. Rotating 180° clockwise is the same as rotating 180° counter-clockwise. If you allow men to be surgeons, you should also allow women to be so. That’s basically it, that’s equality. It’s a very simple concept if I take it to it’s true meaning and not rely on what people think it is. More examples of equality would be : Giving the same amount of money to both your siblings when you die, allow every student to participate, etc… And we will see later on that equality is the basis of justice.

And what is Justice ?

Justice is to me the act of rational balancing and fair ruling among people, and can be generally determined by the dominant agreement of rational thinking and emotional basing on whether something feels/seems fair or not. A lot of things are predefined with fairness, such as no stealing, ease for the one in hardship, etc … The reason why justice is really hard to define is it’s varying degrees among nations, but an easy way to think of it is by going with the terms fair and fairness.
Justice is based on a deeper level of equality. If you say the criminal and the normal citizen should be treated equally it will feel odd. Instead, you’d rather say the criminal and the normal citizen should both be treated fairly you would definitely agree. The old meaning of ‘equal’ and the unchanged meaning of ‘fair’ are still installed in our brains, thus it’s easy to distinguish what should be done.
To make it simple, equality exists in fairness, but in a deeper level. The criminal stole money, and so he had advantage on others by doing so. To make him equal with others again, he should remain in prison for a determined amount of time. That is fairness, it’s deep leveled equality, and justice is just maintaining fairness among people. You need to be just in regard of handicapped people and give them more rights than normal citizens, and not make them totally equal in rights and duties as non-handicapped people! Women should have special rights concerning what she is different from men, such as the right to leave work whenever her period may interrupt her. That is why It would of been nice if people said “gender justice” rather than “gender equality” because considering everyone equal only ruins the taste of having diverse rules.

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This was the short comment from me for today, I hope you learnt something from it and I hope to see comments about this, It would be interesting to know what others think about this. So that was justice vs equality, something people don’t talk about much.

Useful Poetry

A lot of people already consider poetry as a waste of time, and literature overall seems to them as a waste of time for humans. I don’t disagree with them. Some poems are indeed just a waste of time, and some literature is just time consuming, but not all.

To me, or to someone with the same brainwave as me, poems need to fall in one or more of 4 categories in order to feel meaningful, and one of them will probably enrages any human who figures it out.

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Training or skill shaping

Obviously every writer needs to start writer. Every poet, also needs to get into poetry. That being said, poems done in order to train your writing skills and shape your reaction speed, how fast you can determine the shape the poem is in, how the verses and their rhymes should be ordered, etc … This is how humans learn, by training and correcting their mistakes. This is more beneficial to the person doing it than the community that requires moral reshaping. This helps forward your current goal as a poet into writing for more important reasons.

Letting your emotions ponder

Some people use diaries, others use private blogs. Some may prefer writing whole books and some might enjoy rhyming the words to better show their feelings. It is pretty obvious that a human can write in order to be his own psychiatrist. How useful is this ? It’s : free, easy, accessible, and effective. Although not to the extreme point of writing poems, usually people just stick with blogging or writing in diaries. But giving your sentences some jewelry from time to time isn’t a bad thing.

Human rehabilitation

Don’t be mistaken by the word you got used to hear when speaking of prison, it isn’t aimed mainly at just criminals as you may think if is, it’s pretty much like teaching a kid how to behave. Yes, it’s pretty obvious I suppose. Some societies require partial reshaping, or rehabilitation to some of it’s individuals in order to fix the way people approach moral issues or how humans behave. Poetry is a un-ignoreable tool if you want to reshape society. My native country for example, Tunisia, got a boost of motivation to regain it’s independence from France due to a poet who wrote about his love for his country. People might think music can do this better, but Poetry is still on the live side of changing society. It’s quick to say, not so hard to understand, and it’s catchy rhyming and rational structure allows it to spread in a relatively faster manner than the normal way of writing. This isn’t a generally up-voted reason to write poetry, and this does also apply to other literature forms, formally : story telling, article writing. It even applies to media and the net in general, hence why Blogs are such powerful tools.

Earning Money

I can’t say I’m sad to say it, because money is deeply related to most human that involves shareable activities, “free” was it or not. Poetry can be written in order to gain money. I remember one french teacher of mine who didn’t like Balzac so much due to the fact that he writes a book every month (normal literature). And I kind of agree with her, that feels like it’s a source of money rather than try to change society, although I haven’t read about Balzac. Nonetheless, there are people who write for money, whether we see them or not. It might feel infuriating for some, but remember that it’s a source of money for some, and they might not like to doing so and you can never know if it even suffices their living needs, so to them it may feel like half a job, although it is a hobby that you use for money.

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There you go, [insert reader’s name here].  You seem to have read the whole post (or you skimmed some parts with your eyes, we all do that). Anyway, those are some useful ways why mainly poetry and generally literature can be useful in. But nowadays we should really speak of the internet and how media shapes society more than we should speak of old literature. Nonetheless, the media is the product of transitioning the ancient ways of spreading information to the age of the internet.

The Misguiding Thought

[Non Freestyle]

You might keep thinking of the past
Careless  about  what happens now
Careful  to make  the memories last
You nearly sell your “see” for “saw”

But   how long  does  the  past  last
It  will  unexpectedly  goes  by fast
Buzzing  your ears,  to  think  of  it
If you choose not to return and sit

[Free style]

But what does the present hold?
But  the  unreal   human  “must”
What  next  should  not  be  sold
What for the ending now of lust

The   present   never   held  a “some”
This fictitious layer that humans love
The  future,  the  place  for  the  sum
This   blessing    is    that  to  think  of