Human, the social animal

Why is it that we humans nowadays only seek ways to be better than the people we know rather than better ourselves from who we were in the past? By only seeking to get the upper hand over another person, we make every event and it's success subjective or relative. Let us take the example of a monkey, this monkey let us say has a banana. Now imagine another monkey who has two bananas, so our first monkey as we had stated in the beginning would try to get THREE bananas so as to be better than the second monkey rather than get two to better itself. This could be termed as peer pressure but then again it's not always our peers that we try to compete with. It is with the society as a whole that we try and compete with. Why would this be so? Well my explanation would come from the common phrase "Humans are the social animals". We want something to converse and socialize about, thus naturally our achievements become the" brag" factor through which a conversation finds life. Humans would always want to voice their thoughts and emotions and when this feeling takes hold in a group conversation where secrets aren't often exchanged we look to our achievements and success we have attained in the recent past. One would notice that often, the most successful individual in a society gets to voice his/her opinion out loud. This is also related to the attention seeking tendencies we often have. To be recognized, noticed and attain a name in society is what almost every individual wants to achieve. "To make a difference" is a phrase I'm sure we have all heard before. By making a difference we get attention and recognition and become so to say the "alpha male" in the society or more practically in the group/circle of friends we have. Thus we look to succeed over others and not just better ourselves from who we were in the past.

How we see things

Consider the point that you age every second of your life. Now with that in mind, every picture you take will be a picture of a younger you. Thus any form of representation of yourself physically is of yourself from the past. Consider a mirror, the light reflects off the mirror and reaches your eye which is then processed by the brain. Now light travels at 3x10^8 m/s, say you stand 1 meter away from the mirror, now time equals distance/speed. Therefore 1/3x10^8 secs add that to the amount of time your brain takes to process the image and make sense of it. Thus even when you view something you are always viewing it in the past even though everything exists in the present. We technically live in the past unless we know of the existence of a particular object at that precise moment in time, being aware but not viewing it physically.

Living in the past

If we once again apply the theory of us always seeing things in the past, we would realize that even the things we hear are from the past, nothing is heard at that particular point in time when the sound is emitted from the source as even sound waves take time to propagate through air, liquids and solids; again we need to keep in mind that even a fraction of a second is to be accounted for. This theory sounds much more probable because sound travels slower when compared to light but then again I may be subject to criticism as one might say that the sound was emitted in the past but heard in the present but our brain still takes time to process and makes sense of the sound we just heard so the theory still holds. Now that we have established this thought, apply it to all of our senses, the way we know and feel any physical object or being in this existent world. Can we conclude that we are always living in the past?

Distinguishing between conscious and subconscious mind

The more you try not to think about a particular event or thought, the more we are aware of it. Why might this be so? When we do not want to think of something by will, our conscious mind is at work and thus our mind repeatedly reminds itself about what it is trying to ignore. So as to prevent itself from committing the mistake of ending up thinking about the exact same thing or similar, which we do not want to be reminded about. But in the process of remembering what it is we are trying to ignore or forget, we think of it more due to the fact that our conscious mind is at work. Anything our conscious mind does, we are aware of. So why would we forget things so easily then? This would probably be because of the work of our subconscious. When we usually forget something, we would notice that we were absorbed in some other thought or task at that moment in time which makes you forget the task you are trying to remember to do in the future. But since your conscious mind wants to work on the current happenings around you at that given moment, the thought of remembering the future event we want/have to do is pushed back into the subconscious mind. Thus we forget what we walked into a room for etc. We need to maintain the idea that the thought is not completely lost until the deed/task relating to that thought is completed . Thus, it still exists in our subconscious mind but we are not fully aware of it. When our conscious mind does realize that the task related to that particular thought is not completed, the thought stored in the subconscious is brought into the conscious mind. Thus, we remember what we have forgotten.

Mental conditions induced in childhood

If ever a question of why an individual's personality and character is such and such arises, we are sure to find the answers in their childhood and how they are brought up. The first 20+ years of every human being seems to affect how he lives the rest of his life. Thus, we realize that every mental illness, can always be traced back to a certain or a collection of incidents that the person has faced when he was a child. This would obviously be because, we as children are not aware of the world and the way it works and we rely on our elders and - at the time of adolescence- on our friends and family too. No matter how great that childhood may have been for a person, the most remembered event will affect their life decisions in the future. We also need to be aware that this event that occurred can be remembered subconsciously too, and not always in the conscious mind as the conscious may feel that that event is worthless and thus not focus its attention on it so much. Thus, we see cases where people do not remember what affected them and why it did to cause such mental trauma that it lasts for life. We need to keep in mind that the event that affects them is relative. For example: if a boy who has lived the aristocratic life experiences his family going through debts, then that event would affect him. If a boy a boy who has been living in debt all his life experiences the same situation, it would not affect him a great deal. Thus, the event and how it affects each individual is relative to how they spent their childhood.

Emptiness and boredom

Humans feel this need to occupy themselves with something all the time. Like how I'm typing this out because I'm bored right now for example. They also find the need to be "filled" by something either for a short period of time or long. Usually this is fulfilled by having friends and family and when this is not enough for an individual they look to satisfy themselves by finding themselves a partner with desired qualities, be it physical qualities or attitude or personalities. Thus, when this "partner's place" is left vacant and nobody is there to fulfill it, they focus their attention on a kind of materialism or give away the passion with - which they would've loved the partner- to another existing person(s) such as boy bands in the case of girls and models/actresses in the case of boys. We would find this occurrence mostly in adolescents as it is around that time that one would be most probably experiencing love for the first time. We would notice that these type of people would often get offended when a foul remark is made upon that celebrity and also that they would be emotional for that person for what they go through. They would sympathize or even empathize with them at all times.

Deja Vu

Your mind creates the scenario so as to satisfy itself with the most probable events, And when the event does occur, it's seems like you've seen it because your mind has taken the most probable events to satisfy itself by playing the scenario which you subconsciously wish to happen. Haven't you noticed that when deja vu occurs its always related to some event that u know is going to happen but don't know the exact details of it? Your conscious mind ignores it because it feels it's not such an important event but your subconscious wants it to happen.