Happiness Is A Scam - Santosh Jha (best books to read .TXT) 📗

and hormones. We need to understand, what we have discussed, should ideally be accepted as generic and superordinate reality of perceptions. This shall facilitate our understanding of true reality.

We need to ask, ‘What is emotion?’ We have to work out a novel and alternative cognition of the metaphor of emotion. We cannot reach to the roots of the reality of the true perception and actualization of emotion, if we go by the populist and dominant definition available or by what we feel as. Why? As I have very humbly been insisting; most of our perceptions are scammed ones as we have been trained to accept certain fixed and populist perception of realities. Science offers us different perspectives for novel and alternative perceptions, which can help us understand the realities and come out of this scammed world of populist perceptions.

We shall try here a novel and alternative cognition of the reality of emotion to understand, how modern men and women must see and visualize reality, away from old, archaic and populist perceptions. We have already deliberated how reality is a probability and not a fixed entity. Reality emerges out of interaction between living organism and live milieus. This is core cognition. We need to hypothesize that nature and evolution works its intelligence through chemical coding of a simple and straight set of Information. These information are bare basic and fundamental to the survival optimization of an organism. We can, from our knowledge of history of evolution of organisms, hypothesize that such core, critical and fundamental information are coded chemically in the cellular environment itself. As the organism moves in the external environment, there can be probabilities of two simple types – one favorable for survival and one against. Very naturally, broad Intentionality of ‘to move or not to move’ has to happen. This intentionality shall be carried out by two opposing chemical signals – Excitatory or Inhibitory. A hormone is equipped to perform the dual functions. These two types of Intentionality however are superordinate situations and the actual situation in the external milieus may be a permutation and combination of the two broad types. More complex the milieus (like that of humans), far more complex and extensive shall be the permutations and combinations. It would be interesting knowledge as how brain states process these complexities to engender specific perception. It is now known to science that hormonal system; the endocrine system in its holism, is a complex system and contemporary human milieus are not suitable for their smooth functioning. That is probably why most humans in modern times have troubled homeostasis, which the endocrine system is responsible to maintain in optimal wellness.

Given this hypothesis, we can say that emotions are the chemically ‘mediated’ processing of an emergent reality, emanating out of the interaction between organism and external milieus. The brain or any primitive sensory system probably does the simple ‘matching’ of existing templates of nature’s coded intelligence about survival basics, with the incoming sensory information about emerging situations in the external milieus and then on create a sensory response to the new situation by selecting an option out of the six core reactions, which we know as emotions. For ease and simplicity of internalization, we can say that Emotions are some sort of a chemical ‘metaphor’ or symbol, benchmarked by brain states to recognize a specific situation, as different from others. It is like when someone says Apple, it is essentially a metaphor and a symbol, we humans have designed and benchmarked to signify a fruit, different from all other fruits. Emotions therefore can be accepted as chemical symbols of situations, as navigational vocabulary. As the emotion is finalized; the chemical messengers, the specific neurotransmitters called hormones are activated, which in turn relay suitable motor action and behavioral action for muscles. Most of this happens as subconscious or unconscious process and we as ‘subject’ of actions, only ‘own’ what have already been commanded. This reality modern science has known well and has formalized it as a measurable objective fact.

This causality of emotions-perceptions-intentionality-behavior is very crucial to understand how we perceive a reality. It is complex process and most of it is subconscious. Our conscious self is not even aware of them but, owns it as he or she doing it. This aspect must be kept in mind, when we shall detail about scams of perceptions.

We can see how nature and evolution has worked out a well-oiled and chemically-perfected intelligence of creating realities for organisms and also the way out of the emergent reality to optimize survival. Science tells us that any small aberration in this mechanism and process causes perceptional malfunctions and behavioral pathology in humans. It is now known that the dopamine system is ‘key’ to many perceptional functions as well as behavioral routines. Scientists have known that dopamine is the hormones responsible for habit-formation in organisms, including humans. This is crucial chemical functioning, which needs elaboration.

The brain is the navigation room for all realities and all perceptions. The brain however, was not designed and evolved to create perceptions and realities. It was designed to navigate an organism in external milieus with safety and success of survival. This survival optimization is an ever evolving intelligence and that is what is known in evolutionary biology as Natural Selection. Brain is designed to perceive a reality and then install ‘habits’ in people, as they subconsciously own a perception and commensurate behavior-action. If the habit is successful, it survives and is passed on to next generation. If not, it is eliminated. There is a popular analogy to describe natural selection. If a man, who has the brilliance of rightly ‘perceiving’ whether a rustling of grass at some distance is because of blowing wind or a lion approaching, he survives and passes on his ‘good habit’ to next generation. Another man, who cannot distinguish between wind blowing and lion approaching, is killed and his perceptional habit is eliminated. This so-called natural selection is subconscious and still works for most people, as they ape the ‘successful’ perceptional habit.

The trouble is; in modern human milieus, the Natural Selection does not work as simplified, as the way described the above-mentioned wind and lion analogy. Science tells us that hormones also work as ‘filters’ and ‘contexts’ for our subconscious mind to engender a sense of selection, in landscape we move. The dopamine is also present in visual neural plexus and it presents a subconscious ‘selection’ to your mind. For example, if I am a junk food addict, it means eating them is ‘rewarding’ for me. The dopamine accepts it as Habit – A Selection preference. When I go to a shop next; the dopamine ‘mediates’ my vision as I shall automatically and subconsciously see only those junk food items out of the heap of other foods. The dopamine in my visual plexus ‘filters’ this auto-selection for me. Another person, who hates junk food and loves fresh vegetables and fruits, shall automatically not see the junk items and instead, his eyes shall see the fruits-vegetables, which my eyes shall blissfully miss.

The trouble is; even when I am having a wrong and harmful choice, I am not being eliminated, as I shall survive with medication and other health support. Junk food may be like a ‘long-term lion’, still; in modern milieu, it cannot eliminate me, as it would in old times. The natural selection is in fact all scammed as huge amount of advertisements and fake-fudged-fabricated-propagandist messages are fed to people, encouraging them to eat junk food. The profit-empire has scammed reality and hoodwinked perceptions. The natural selection is scammed; this scams the perceptions, which in turn scams the real and true utility-worth of a reality.

The perceptions, as we have talked earlier, have ‘contexts’, ‘filters’ and selection biases, which are subconscious and that is why, we only ‘own’ them. It cannot be said that we ‘free-will’ them to be our conscious choices. This needs to be kept in mind when we talk about scams of perceptions.

The perceptions probably are the tools, which the chemical system of brain’s information processing engenders to facilitate suitable motor and behavioral actions for survival optimization. Perceptional mechanisms have probably evolved later to optimize survival by installing good habit of right natural selection. But, it has now become a scam. It is very much like reality happened billions of years back but languages we humans speak and understand happened only a few thousand years back.

For science, it is still a domain of uncertainty to fully unravel Consciousness, which is popularly accepted as the media to handle perceptions. Like consciousness, perceptions and reality are also intangibilities, which science is still exploring. We need not go into the details of these aspects as it is not the domain of this eBook. What we must keep in mind is that all these entities, like consciousness and perceptions need to be looked at with novel and alternative analogies and symbols, to understand them. Especially, to understand how scams creep in, into consciousness and perceptions.

Our purpose of talking about consciousness and perceptions here is just to entertain the probability of a hypothesis that the intricacies about consciousness and perceptional diversities in human world may not be actual and innate functions of brain’s information processing. The complexities of external milieus, which settled human life created by introducing societal structures, cultural benchmarks and rituals and technological advancements in life-living, etc, may have added such new layers in human brain, which made emergence of complex navigational templates like consciousness and perceptional dimensions. However, we can say with some confidence that all these are progression stages in the long journey of Intentionality, over billions of years. This aspect and probability of reality shall help us unraveling the scam about happiness. We talk about it later. The Intentionality probably is the magic word for unraveling scams of consciousness and perceptions.

What we are arriving at is this hypothesis that our brain was primarily designed to work out external realities and its navigational imagery for us, based on the long, singular and specific intelligence of survival and mating successes. To work out this singular intelligence, it had a somehow simplified mechanism of ‘matching’ or ‘recognizing’ all information about external milieus and situations, with its pre-wired templates of survival-mating requirements. To execute this ‘success’ to perfection, the brain had neurotransmitters called hormones, which the brain produced itself. These hormones transmitted or communicated the desired and required motor and behavior actions in us. Scientists have known that the hormones perform complex functions for us and are responsible for chemical signaling to all parts of body through blood streams. They are the carriers of Intentionality.

The critical aspect of this mechanism is its speed and short response time. It had to be as on speed of processing of reality and suitable reactions depended survival. The approaching lion does not give you much response time! Science tells us that higher brain states of cortex part may take a time up to weeks and even a month to process all information and arrive at a ‘decision’. It takes time as this brain states handles mostly humanly designed conflicts and choices, which do not immediately impact survival but can be crucial in optimizing a person’s long-term successes in complex social-cultural milieus. This difference must be kept in mind. We also need to see ‘successes’, as we popularly know them, as shades or evolved expressions of core Intentionality of survival success.

The hormones not only are there to communicate and also ensure suitable motor and behavior actions of our body; they also are part of the emergent intelligence, which a moving organism requires to update and upgrade to optimize survival successes. So, every time an organism does something, which the brain perceives as ‘successful’ for survival optimization; the brain releases dopamine hormone, which we know as reward hormone. The release of dopamine makes us feel rewarded and ‘happy’. This ‘reward happiness’ is what we need to understand in its holism and objectivity; divorced of the populist and cultural notions and feelings associated with it in modern times.