Thought paths

Paths

New roads are built to bypass busy sections. New roads create smoother shorter routes. It is nice to sail down these new roads skirting the jams and traffic headaches. Curiosity works like this. You learn new things thereby creating a new way of doing something, bypassing the muddle and confusion that you once had. New information enables you to get what you want done. Easier, smoother, more accurately. When these new links are formed it feels good. And we are rewarded by this change. The improved flow is rewarding, for a while. Curiosity is linked with reward. We get a physiological high when those gaps in our knowledge are filled.

Curiosity is not the only thing that gives us the impetus to solve a problem. There are other things too, but curiosity will be there somewhere. When that problem is solved, we are rewarded. A chemical reward is released in our mind/body. That chemical reward is manufactured and let loose inside us.

Change is vital to a happy existence. Variety is the spice of life. This saying cannot be worded any better. People have devised eight different ways to cook a potato. Anything to mix it up a bit. Baked, boiled, chipped, mashed and so on. There are plenty of way to create a change, though a day full of routine will provide enough change for most. We are at our lowest when we can’t revel in the freedom to change what we are doing. Not being well enough to go out is bad enough, not having the choice is more dispiriting. Reward needs change. Many will do roughly the same set of things on the same set days. Having said that many will do those same things but with different people or in different places which reduces any boredom a little.

Learning new skills is rewarding. We practice those skills becoming more masterful by the day. Initially, our rate of improvement is quite considerable. However, as time goes by the rate of improvement declines. It takes the same amount of effort to get from stage six to stage seven as it did to get from the start to stage six. Ever more effort in to get a little bit better. That can make the thing we are doing a little boring. Not only does the rate of improvement wane but we exhaust all the variations and diminishing curiosity is to be found within that field. We have seen it all. Nothing new, nothing different, little change and thus the pursuit, the hobby, the sport can be less rewarding than it once was. We need both curiosity and reward to motivate us. Are you interested in seeing the same, same, same, endlessly. Do you enjoy unpredictability over predictability. Something predictable by definition means you know the outcome. Knowing the outcome is the opposite of curiosity and wondering what will happen.

Whilst boredom can set in when we hit our limits, there is still pride found in showing off your mastery. That is irrespective of whether or not you are set to get even more masterful. Taking pride in something, showing off your mastery, demonstrating what you can do is rewarding.

I have asked many people what they think drives them. Survival often comes up. Most want to survive. Not all, all of the time of course, bit those that want to end it today are the in the tiny minority. In some busy railway stations signs have been put up that read, ‘do not jump during rush hour’. No matter what time they jump in front of the train, it is rather annoying. It delays the train for quite a while. It is frustrating. People have places to go, people to meet, dinners to cook and this selfish person has delayed everyone at this station and beyond. Half an hour passes and people become angry. Why are the trains still not running? The railway workers announce that they are looking for the head. The body has been bagged up and is ready to be sent to the morgue, but the head is not where they expect. This news tends to quieten down those complaining a little. A selfish person jumping in front of the train and selfish people in the vicinity caring about being delayed more than the life departed.

The number of people taking their own life is higher than we would like but statistically speaking, suicides are quite rare. The rate may reach one person in every ten thousand per year. Most people want to live. Most people want to survive. Some naïvely relish the idea of surviving a plague, or civil uprising as they believe life will be testing, dramatic and challenging. It won’t be as fun as we dream it would be. Fights, food running out, only bad water to drink. Surviving is hard when hardship befalls us. It will be surviving rather than thriving.

Those, namely the majority of us, want not only to survive but to thrive too. We are not focusing everything on just making it to the next day intact. We want things in life. We want to expand our lives. We want to build things. We want to see things. We want to try things. We want to add to the sum total of all that humanity can offer. We want to help people. We want to help animals and maybe do something positive for the ecosystem. I am sure you can think of a thousand other reasons for wanting to survive.

Some remarkable tales of people overcoming adversity are to be found that talk to us about survival. A farmer got his hand caught in his machinery and left his portable telephone in the driving cab. With no painkillers and a blunt knife, he hacked his hand off to get out of the fix. That is no mean feat. Others in similar situations have given up. One person managed to survive in a boat for many weeks drifting about in the currents. They used their bare hands to prise a nail out of the wood and used it to fish. Simply overcoming the odds is reward enough. How can I survive? I want to continue with my life, me. It is for me though, as selfish as that sounds. Selfishness is to be commended when it is used to endure the struggle. To prosper, to make headway, to achieve is the name of the game rather than simply survive though. We place too much stock on the idea that we are simply doing what it takes to survive. The adrenalin pumps from time to time when there is a need to escape danger. Our survival instinct often kicks in, but nevertheless there is more to it than that. We think about all the things ahead of us that we want to do. That motivate us. We have hopes and aspirations. We strive for more. We do lots to escape from boredom. Staying alive at all costs is unappealing if the rest of your life will be limited, restrained and dull.

If we are asking what drives us and survival doesn’t sum it up well, then what about procreation? Putting procreation forward as a core drive puts those that can’t have children or don’t want children in an awkward position. Besides, a drive is there from birth until we depart. Young children are not thinking about procreating. Nor do we stop striving when we pass childbearing age. Far from it. Many begin their life in earnest at that point. It may be true that we have a grandparenting role, but most of our children become sufficiently independent to look after themselves and their children. We may have a use in procreation as a helpful sister, brother, or grandparent, but each of these people have their own agenda. They want to do things for themselves too. Usually, they want to do things that they want with only a few dedicating their whole life to child rearing. In many cases as grandparents, it is interfering rather than assisting. To get to the point, I can tell you that conception is a side effect of sex, largely accidental, unintentional, semi-planned-at-best. The more sex we as a species have, the more offspring we create. So long as enough people are having children the population will expand, though at this point in history it seems the population is expanding beyond sensible limits.

If you choose not to have children, you can still have a very fulfilling rewarding life. People are driven whether they have children or not. Procreation is not a universal drive. Whether children we have were planned or not, curiosity and reward come into play. We want to know everything we can about the process and what it entails. We have children for our pleasure. It gives us a selfish sense of being needed. It is rewarding when we see the fruits of our labour. We get a lot from seeing our children progress. We revel in their success. We enjoy seeing them getting into university or doing well in the workplace. My child, me, us, we did it. The love we share of our family means a lot to us personally. We can love a child, ignoring how devious they are. There is a love for very nasty people. Again, that is centred on our own being. Selfishness need not be seen as evil, wicked or something to spurn. Selfishness enables us to procreate. It enables us to offer the maximum to our children.

From negative ideas come untold positives – that is if you reframe things and look hard enough. One example I use to transform a negative into a positive relates to our striving to pass on our genes. Many cherish the idea of living on via our blood relations. Spreading your genes far and wide may seem a nice idea, more so if you think your genes are special. Yet the idea of passing on of your genes is a fantasy. You may have a regal bloodline, you may be super beautiful, super fit, super-duper but no matter who you are, your genes get diluted rather quickly. For a start any immediate offspring is only half yours. The other half will be your spouses. Your grandchildren divide it into a quarter. By ten generations it is watered down to one part in over a thousand. It is less of a chain and more of a murky pool that you emerge from and potentially contribute to. Your legacy, your goofiness, ginger, gregarious gene segment that emerge in your children or skips generations and rears its head later down the line has an exaggerated importance. And the positive? When we acknowledge that our genetic code disperses quite quickly, we are more receptive to fostering - more at ease with bringing up a child that is not half ours. We say, our genes, but we didn’t make them, we were handed them via a random mixing in the womb. These genes that we made no effort to create, are split in half at the first conception. Diluting rapidly, halving into irrelevance generation by generation. The blood line belongs to mythology. It is a delusion. What happens during your life is going to seem more important than what went on before and what will happen after. Your grandparents thought that too. As will any ancestors.

Bringing up a child, making them lively, happy and creative is a marvellous thing to witness. If that child happens to be fathered or mothered biologically by someone that is not you, then take comfort in the fact the nurture is as important as nature. There is a positive to be found in the understanding that genes are transient. Your genetic code exists whilst you remain breathing but disappears thereafter. Only some of your genetic code is utilised in procreation. The great thing about great grandchildren is how greatly your genes get diluted. That enables you to stop worrying about the need to spread your seed.

Sexual attraction brings us together. It is desirable, compelling, and exciting. However, nature has no grand plan. We are set up to bond and bond we do. Our libido differs. Some have sex in the forefront of their mind night and day. For others it is of little interest. Sex can motivate us into action, that is for sure. Sex is not the base drive, reward is. Sex brings us reward. The release is one example of how change is so pleasurable. A different sensation, a different thing to do which releases endorphins in the mind as well as fluids elsewhere. Nature’s trick is to give us a real sense of accomplishment during and after sexual activity. All that foreplay, fighting and battling to get a relatively brief rush. It can make us proud though, for a long time after too. Memories and experience endure. Then we want more. The curiosity calls us to consider taking it further. Other people, other angles of attack, other places, and other boundaries to push. How else can I liven this up further, we ask? Curiosity really is in everything we do. The devil is in the detail for one comes to the realisation that curiosity and reward feed one another. Fill a gap and you feel the reward. The reward feels good, so you want to explore more.

Curiosity has different scales, different levels and some curiosities linger far longer than others, as does reward. We can experience a small change and feel a slight reward or complete something big to feel a much bigger reward. Reward when we fill our bellies. Reward when we empty our bowels. Reward when we accomplish something. Reward when we tell people things. Lots of rewards, some bigger than others. By thinking about rewards, reward after reward that are released throughout the day, we can answer a serious question. When our life is threatened by someone, why are we so scared of dying? Rewards are chemical compounds. They are manufactured inside us and set to work. Rewards are addictive. We are addicted to life itself.

If we die, we will leave unfinished business, things that we want to do and discover. Partially filled gaps in our understanding and holes in our knowledge. That unfinished business could be science related, or in the religious arena, or things we want to see come to fruition. For some it could be nothing other than wanting to know how our family fares. I like to stress that the level of importance matters only to the individual. We care about ourselves the most, we always have and always will. We care about what happens to us, we care about what we are doing, what we are working on. That is what matters to us the most, not what others are doing. Unless of course someone is doing something that will affect us, or help us, or change things for us. You care about the rewards you are getting; you care about the things you are curious about and you are always, always, always acting in a selfish manner. You don’t want to die because of the selfish wish to see more, do more, feel more and finish more.

A threat induces a fear of imminent pain from violence heading your way. Avoiding pain is for who’s benefit?

The reward mechanism is a bio-chemical system hence it can be played with directly. We can mess with our reward system with drugs and electrical stimulus. Rats have been wired to a machine that gives them a dose of internal reward. They press a button to trigger it and trigger it they do. Endlessly. They will ignore sexual partners in the vicinity, ignore food, ignore everything around them and keep pressing. People have become hooked on drugs and follow a similar behaviour. Instant reward that is as addictive as we are to the addiction to life. The chemical process is so similar it is hard to ignore. We are more of a machine than we like to admit. We humans, those rats need a novel distraction to get them off the drugs. A more exciting environment helps considerably.

Put five female rats in a box with one male rat. The male will mate with them all. He will mate regularly for a while until he gets bored by them. The sexual desire wanes. Maybe he tires of their perfume. Introduce a new female and the desire to mate with her is instantly sparked. Do we see a similar pattern in humans? You bet we do. Variety is the spice of life, namely, change, is powerful in both us and rats.

When we don’t get our drug hit from rewards, what happens? Does our mood sink. Do we start a downward spiral to a more depressed state. There is a comedown from rewards released inside of us, in the same way as a drug addict feels the pain of abstinence. The fix is not quick. One needs to have plenty of rewards in the pipeline. Arrange to meet with people perhaps, arrange to do things, arrange things that gives you a sense of progress.

Rewards are found during and after a wide range of activities. Conversation is one key area where reward is to be found. Face to face works best. When face to face one can gauge reactions and examine body language. The type of conversation matters, good conversation is more rewarding. Listening to a one-way monologue is less likely to be rewarding than a two-way conversation. The more the other listens the better it is. We can be the least selfish when listening attentively to what people have to say. The most rude-selfish are those that talk a lot and care nothing for what you have to say. As for curiosity, that is evident when we care to find out about what others are doing or what they have to say. We are curious about their opinion. The rewards gleaned from talking to someone else has a curious feature. In many cases it does not matter who we tell. The most important thing is whether they are paying sufficient attention or not. It can be anyone that listens. It is almost as if we are talking to ourselves to some extent. We want to unburden our thoughts, desires, and woes. We make friends and so long as it appears that your friend likes you too, that is fine. They could be fooling you but that doesn’t matter until you discover the truth. This is the first example I give of the ignorance paradox.

One may decide to ignore the two ears, one mouth rule by not using your ears twice as much as your mouth. You may not give others much of a chance to speak. That is one form of selfishness amongst hundreds of potential examples we could provide. Selfishness is everywhere including motherhood. Mothers have to be selfish. Labelling a mother as selfish doesn’t seem fair, but mothers have no choice. If they want to lactate, produce milk to breastfeed, they must eat and drink themselves. They must look after themselves first. For a mother to look after someone else, namely the baby she can’t avoid being selfish. Both the mother and the baby win when the mother has her needs met. They both win from the selfishness of the mother.

Looking after yourself is not a bad thing. Can you begrudge a mother for making an effort to take essential vitamins and eating well? It is all good for her and her family. The mother eats and drinks for herself first and foremost however this enables her to feed the child. What do people say to me when I tell them that mothers can’t help being anything but selfish? “I suppose so.” There is no suppose about it. It is a fact of procreation.

megan-and-co

Selfishness is something we try to avoid. Yet we can’t avoid being selfish. The way you view selfishness is going to change. I will demonstrate that selfishness is something to behold. Selfishness gives us the motivation to help. Selfishness can lead to co-operation with others. Those that do nothing bar things for themselves miss out. They don’t get the rewards from being kind and generous.

Being generous can be a wonderful thing. It is not quite as it seems though. Consider this balmy tangle. In the hunter gathering days prior to mass scale food production the men went out to hunt. The women would feed their men before they left. The women give the best portions, the best slices, the most food to the men. The men got priority. At first glance the women appear kind, considerate and generous. They are to some extent. In this hunter gathering community men take precedence over the women. Why? Well, if the men are not fed well, they can’t hunt so well. If they can’t hunt so well, they bring back less food for them and the women. They bring back less for all. So, to what extent are the women considering their own survival and wellbeing by being so generous. The more they give the more they get.