Giving up

I’m exactly at the same place I started. I’ve studied women. I’ve asked women to study me. I just can’t figure it out. I don’t know what women are thinking. My knowledge of the little things has improved, though. For instance I’ve noticed that whenever asked by a female in one of those deep moments of male silence “what are you thinking?” it is unacceptable to say “nothing”. For some reason that I don’t understand women don’t seem to conceive the idea of nothingness as an actual state of mind. Suspicion arises and usually, in my experience, trouble ensues. I give up. Somehow though, I’m secretly happy that I was never able to figure it out. We kind of have to be grateful for having something that keeps us from being completely focused on creating new ways stuff more cheese into our pizzas.

Lies (revised)

I have been lying all week. I am a very bad layer, but I find it is a skill that can be learned. I needed to lie in order to conduct a social experiment. I have met so many people in the past couple of weeks, I am now socially exhausted. I think I need 2 hours alone for each hour I spend socializing. The findings are interesting however and I find myself with a new social model. So I lied to women about a) my job and b) my income. To some I told them that I am a surgeon with a ridiculously high income. To others I told them I was a struggling art student.  If found that women were much more receptive towards the high income, respectful job. I then turned the earnings around. I told them now that I am a broke student of surgery. To others I told them that I was a well-known artist with a pretty good income. Here’s where it gets tricky (at least to me). More women were more receptive to the future possible higher income job of surgeon. I found this fascinating. I suspect we may still be responding to basic evolutionary cues like the ability of a mate to do well in the world. We may be still going out in search for the physical and social characteristics that our ancestors did (I heavily suspect I am), even if those characteristics don’t make immediate sense (I still can't figure many of them out, but not dating a loser or a social pariah kinda makes sense) or matters as much as it once did anymore (like big muscles, etc.). Society may have evolved but I think that we, as a species, haven’t had enough time to catch up.

Ready for the Fall

Autumn. The transition from summer into winter. My favourite time of the year. I can already feel the electricity charging the air. Out on a chilly night in London Bridge you can strike sparks everywhere. The leaves are falling like the many broken dreams that have no more place here. A time for reinvention, revision and a chance to make things better. Much excitement awaits.

Digital Reinvention

Sleepless night >= new blog entry. This time its due not to anguish, distress or noise, but rather the occasional heat wave that keeps me awake. After two years of continuous use, I’ve successfully managed to sleep earplug free. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the tings that have become more and more difficult to do because of the Internet.

The Internet is a great source of entertainment, knowledge and recreation. It is as well a powerful black hole for my valuable and finite time. A recent survey (link) on the American population by the company Intel revealed that around 30% of men and 46% of women would opt to go for 2 weeks without sex than spending the same time without Internet. I for one can barely remember a world without Internet. I’ve noticed however that it’s becoming more and more difficult to forget. I think that sometimes in order to move on we use rely on our ability to forget to survive. Because of all our digital history is now on one or another database (Facebook, Hotmail, Google), and the proliferation of means of capturing precisely what happened with little room for later reinterpretation (everyone has a camera in their pocket), it is nowadays very difficult to reinvent oneself. Trying to figure out a new identity is more difficult when the world keeps reminding you about what you’ve done, what went wrong and what you’ve said every single day.

 After a difficult crisis, we’d like to think that we’ve come out stronger and better. Like we’ve come up with a new version of ourselves. New goals are set, and we go out again into the world to kick ass or inevitable get our asses kicked every now and then. I try nowadays not to dwell too much in the past, and look with optimism to the future. I try to limit the number of pictures that lie around the web, and keep the personal ones, well, personal. That said, I think the real enemy of personal reinvention, and thus progress, is comfort. And I do find the Internet to be a very comfy place.

So I finally managed to make the time to finish my first song (link). One of my art teachers once taught me that an art piece is never really released, but rather escapes from the artist and makes its way into the world. I’m sure my feelings about this song will change in the future, so if I kept postponing it would loose its original meaning. I didn’t mean to offend or hurt anyone with it, just to tell what happened during this rough summer, from my own, completely biased, re-interpretative and subjective point of view.

"I don’t love you, but I know someone who does…."

Another sleepless night. At least this time I know the reason why, tough. I’m trying to quit earplugs. I got hooked on them a couple of years ago when I had a snoring roommate. It’s time to move on. On that note…

 I like meeting new people and talk about thoughts, feelings and ideas. Lately however, after a deep, interesting, meaningful conversation with someone new, things take a strange course. They introduce me to their cult. I end up meeting a very nice group of people who believe in some higher truth. The problem with this higher truth is that they usually don’t offer any evidence to support it and it also contradicts other people’s higher truths. And did I mention that there can be only one higher truth and it is obviously theirs?

I honestly thought you had to have some sort of mental/spiritual/physical problem to belong to a cult. I was dead wrong. Most people in cults, at least the ones I am now familiar with, are actually very intelligent, successful, charismatic people. I think sometimes even more than the average person. Albeit a bit eccentric, they are definitely not stupid. That is even scarier. How the hell do these people that are sane and smart end up believing the most ludicrous stories? After years of never hearing from them, why would they approach me now, all of a sudden? I think I’m giving off social cues that they’ve become really good at detecting.

From the information that I’ve gathered, cults find that people are usually more susceptive emotionally when they’ve been cut off from a certain group or social activity. When someone moves to a new city, especially if they are young and inexperienced and can’t cope with loneliness, they become a very good target for these groups. College campuses are apparently their main source of new adepts and (other than at home) where most of the indoctrination takes place. By the time they go out to the real world, they’re ready to spread the word. 

When people loose a job, have a difficult breakup or have an existential crisis, they suddenly find themselves longing for that missing social place in the world. Being social is, after all, a real need just like eating and sleeping. And it is in these moments of emotional distress that cults have a good shot at regular people. I would know. Suddenly those pamphlets and those promises of hugs and a place amongst new friends begin to look actually pretty good.

Once you are in, once you’ve become accepted as part of the group, once you start forming a social bond with the people within the cult, it is very difficult to escape. Even if you later realize that you don’t really believe in their central Dogma, you now face being ostracized by your new friends and their society-within-society. And they are merciless at that. Very few people leave. It is easier for the mind to accept their beliefs under the premise that maybe they’ve always suspected that there was something greater than them and it may as well be that.

Sadly, most of the cults have a “you are either one of us or one of them” attitude. And now that you are part of the cult, it becomes more about the group and your new buddies than about the actual beliefs themselves. When you become critical of their beliefs, they take it as you being critical of their friends. And they will stand up for their friends. After all, that’s a big part of what society is all about.

What kept me from being sucked in is that they blatantly make a virtue out of not thinking. Cults are dangerous because they allow people that don't have the answers to think that they do. Cults offer to fill a personal void, but it is only other people with their own limitations and with their own agendas that end up filling that void. The comfort that it brings does so at a terrible price.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, my advice would be to join a sports team. Even if you don’t like sports, it has a similar psychological effect plus health benefits without the bullshit and social anguish.

Mind over Matter

I think I’m closer to finding what the fuck happened back there. There is a long story behind it that I have not discussed. I have however written a song about it (yeah, its official, I’m venturing into music now!), so stay tuned.

After reading the very insightful comment left by Nikki on the past post I realized that something must have happened to drive me into this rather paranoid state of mind. I suspected that it was just bad luck, but now I realize it was a series of bad decisions that I made that led me here. Coming out of a very long and very fulfilling relationship, for reasons that had little to do with whether or not we still liked each other, was incredibly difficult. It is all very fuzzy, but from what I can tell it seems that afterwards I entered immediately into denial. The added pressure of a PhD (lots of work, no pay), being away from my family and friends and in one of the loneliest places in the world did not make things any easier. At some point during the year it all sinks in, resulting in a dramatic decrease of my self-esteem. During all of this I’m still in denial of course, so I’m not aware this condition or the consequences that it entails. At some point I enter panic mode, and all I want is a hug.

As a friend so eloquently put it “If someone’s going though a rough time, they’re much more likely to find you sexy than when life’s going well”. She continued to explain that, “”when your self-esteem is low, you underestimate your own attractiveness and overestimate other people’s. In short: you are vulnerable, need a cuddle, and are less fussy about who gives it to you”. The last part clearly explains the series of terrible dates and drama that ensued afterwards. You’ll have to wait for the song to hear about them in detail though. As for now I thank my friends Nikki, Dot, Kevin, Peter, Juan Antonio and Johannes for inspiring me to go on and to be responsible for my own actions and their consequences. You guys are always in my thoughts. I’ll leave you with a little piece of my next entry (and yes, it’ll be part of the song).

I remember when my mum told me not to take candy from strangers. Well, it is one the finest pieces of advice I ever got. During this difficult period, I was approached by several people, most of them very good-looking, intelligent girls, who were well aware of my situation. Apparently they could see it in my eyes (whether on not the eyes are the window to the soul is another topic altogether). They approached me, and comforted me and gave me hope of a better life. They of course wanted me to join their cult. Yes, cult. To be continued…

Hating the Game

I’m perfectly happy on my own. Always have been. Being an introvert and constantly seeking time for myself has given me the chance to think about my actions in a more rational manner. This helps me figure out what motivated me to do something in the first place and think about my next move. I don’t understand however my drive to find a partner. My body constantly reminds me that my DNA is seeking its complementary strand to recombine with. Hormones rush trough my body at all hours of the day, interrupting my flux of thoughts and feelings when a distracting silhouette passes by. I find it both frustrating and exhausting, but at some very basic level, very fun and satisfying. My friends say that I shouldn’t hate the players, but rather hate the game, which I am at the moment. A really bad date can be very harmful for the spirit, crushing your self-esteem, taking up your valuable time and leaving behind a sense of loneliness, inadequacy and isolation. Feelings of rejection and embarrassment can seriously harm a person’s intellectual, physical, emotional and sexual wellbeing. And even if you manage to find that “special someone”, will my DNA be satisfied then? Biology does not offer a hopeful answer and hints that at least human males are never satisfied. Someone told me once that: “A man is only as faithful as his options”. I would have taken this comment more lightly if it hadn’t come from a professor of Genetics at UCL. And so I find myself in another sleepless night, thinking about how little this makes sense to me and yet how drawn I am to it. This is what I mean what I talk about free will. Sometimes I feel like a slave to my own genes. When dates go well, however, I vaguely seem to recall how none of this existential stuff matters then. The air seemed fresher and I was still not getting any sleep because life suddenly felt really good. Or so I recall.