Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "cognitive-psychology"

Faith is no declaration of character,
It is just a matter of mental necessity.
It has nothing to do with truth and holiness,
In many cases, it makes a person quite unholy.
I often find myself speaking to my dead teacher,
It gives me strength and helps me take the leap.
The scientist in me knows it’s all in my head,
But sometimes all logic must take a backseat.
The problem however is not our imaginary friend,
It is our loyalty to it at the expense of our humanity.
Keep your faith if it helps you through hard times,
But never let it be an impediment to universality.
Imagination is healthy when it sustains us as human,
When it ruins our humanity, it’s time for its demolition.

Belief sustains a person,
But behavior sustains a society.
Belief has nothing to do with truth,
It is just a matter of mental necessity.
Often our belief defies all reason,
That's absolutely okay to a great extent.
What's not okay is to impose it on others,
To sentence others to our imprisonment.
I believe, that my teacher watches over me,
Even though he walks the earth no more.
This belief has nothing to do with your life,
But it helps me walk past my crippling woe.
All beliefs are good beliefs with or without reason,
If they help you in life to become a better person.

“We Are All Racist (The Sonnet)

If we are still uncomfortable to face,
The roots of racism, how can we uproot racism!
Unless we recognize our tendency for division,
How can we ever be the cause of universalism!
The fundamental fact of human nature is,
We are a septic tank of prehistoric biases.
Sectarianism comes to us far too easily,
For we are all fundamentally racist.
Cruelty is the mainspring of survival in the wild,
So our brain leans more towards cruelty than kindness.
Millions of years of conditioning won’t vanish overnight,
We must self-regulate with our newly developed conscience.
The end of racism starts with the recognition of racism.
We are civilized only when we recognize our uncivilization.”

Old is not necessarily gold,
New is not necessarily cool.
Stereotypes without scrutiny,
Sustain only a society of fools.
Answer to one stereotype is not another,
Answer to one assumption is not another.
To make assumption is not wrong but,
To assume it as truth supreme is rhubarb.
Perception is all about assumption,
Our brain hasn’t evolved to observe reality.
Biases prevent the observation of biases, unless,
You are hellbent to expand across comfort and luxury.
Stereotypes are archetypes of self-preservation.
Look outside the self and you’ll find assimilation.

Life is one big prejudice unless you question everything. You say, you don’t have any prejudice! Let’s put that to test, shall we! Read the following phrases, pausing a few seconds after each.

Hallelujah!

¡Viva la libertad!

Shabbat Shalom!

Allahu Akbar!

Black Lives Matter!

We’re Here, We’re Queer!

My body, my decision!

Now bring your faculty of reason into action, and think, which of the terms induced a negative emotional response in your mind? It’s nothing out of the ordinary, it’s just common animal nature.

How your brain got conditioned to react in such a way that’s a different matter. The main thing is, your brain just reacted exactly like the brain of pavlov’s dog every time it heard the bell. The only difference is that, a dog doesn’t have further brain capacity to question such conditioning, but a human does.

Brave is not the one who has no dark corners in their mind,
Brave is the one who is friends with their dark corners.
Courageous is not the one who never sheds a single tear,
Courageous is the one who draws strength from their tears.
A sound mind is not one that has no superstition,
A sound mind is one that has a grip over its superstition.
A sane mind is not one that does not believe in fiction,
A sane mind is one that knows good fiction from bad fiction.
Education is needed, but not mere education of the head,
What’s really needed is education of the whole being.
It is easy to fill the head with facts and figures,
Use a fact to lift the world, then you’re an educated being.
More than in head and body, we gotta grow up in heart.
A billion pounds of head is worthless, if there is no heart.

Chemicals breed prejudice,
Chemicals breed love.
Chemicals breed hate and rage,
Chemicals breed the atoning dove.
Chemicals breed walls of divide,
Chemicals breed the bridge to unite.
Chemicals breed death and disease,
In those very chemicals we find sight.
Chemicals are us, we are the chemicals,
In this mortal world there is nothing else.
While most are run by the whim of chemicals,
Some bend chemicals at will, as true sapiens.
Chemicals are the cause, chemicals are the result.
Awareness of chemicals is awareness of the world.

Truth and facts are not the same, because facts alone don’t make the truth. Truth requires insight, truth requires wisdom. Facts can contribute to that insight and wisdom, but access to facts doesn’t necessarily entail access to wisdom. The best example I can think of is that of love. Love is truth, whereas lust is fact. Lust may be a part of love, but it’s not the whole of love. In fact, in many cases lust is not even part of the picture. The same goes for truth and facts. Fact is a state of matter, truth is a state of mind. Matter makes the mind – sure – but to fathom the matter behind mind in its fullest intricacies will take us millennia more.

Neurons giveth,
neurons taketh away.
By neurons we forge self,
with neurons we fade away.

Within neurons cosmos comes to life,
within neurons worlds come to end.
Neurons are building blocks of walls,
as well as the instrument of bridges.

There is not one but two cosmos,
one made by nature, another by neurons.
We are the makers of observable reality,
shaped by hopes and biases of our own.

Neurons are the birthplace of God,
Neurons produce all ghosts and goblins.
Life is a concoction of neurochemistry,
Boon and bane are both our own making.