I am not sure if I am alone in this. But I am haunted by a constant fear. The feeling that it is possible that my thoughts may not be mine.
At work, a common task I have is to use Newton’s method to find a minimal of a given function. But last week, I had a strange realization, that I have absolutely no justification why it would ever work. Not to bore reader with the mathematical details, but Newton’s method was only proved for convex functions, a very special type of functions. But yet, I was so convinced that Newton’s method would always give me the answer I was looking for. Lack of better a description, it just feels right to use it. But in reality, the reason that it feels right to me, most likely is that this is the method that was taught to me in college, and it is the method that is used in a lot of research papers that I read. In a way, that my choice of using Newton’s method isn’t really mine, but of my professor who taught me to use it in college, and of those authors of the aforementioned research papers, albeit unintentionally.
We all have those strange feels-right moments. The moments that we so believed that our judgement is true but we can’t really tell exactly why. It is often easy conclude then those judgement is universal or innate. But the truth is, complicated.
Taking physical attraction for example, most of us probably have an image of an ideal attract male looks like, which we associate with muscularity and an ideal female looks like, which we associate with femininity. And images of different people may share a lot of similarities, for example, height, body type, and facial features. It would be easy to conclude that there exists an universal agreed idea of muscularity and femininity. But if we zoom out in time, and look at the portrait of the french King Louis XVI, who is arguably the most muscular figure in the 18 century French. In the portrait, King Louis XVI wore tights, heels, and makeup, which are not the markers of muscularity in our society. It reminds us that gender construct may not as fixed and universal as we think it is. In reality, it is most likely that our idea of physical attractiveness comes from social expectation. Nowadays, mostly in the form of TV shows (I guess they are called internet series now) and movies. So, in a way, even who we decide to date, is not really our own choice.
But this does not just apply to the idea of physical attraction, but also to our idea of what to value, how we measure success, and what and whom we consider as great. Whether we value individual happiness and benefit or the interests of the collective, or if we measure success based on money or fame, what we desire and want to be in this world is deeply shaped by the world itself. As it is always important to examine what we value and why are we valuing them.
More profoundly, we have grown incredibly skilled in manipulating our own subconscious. From what ads we see only and where we see them, to the product placement and pricing in supermarket shelves, we have invented a whole field of consumer physiology to manipulating our decision making without us knowing it. I do not know if I can ever be rid of my fear and escape the influence of everything around me. But at least, with a more examined life, hopefully I can defend my actions using beyond just my feelings.
But I still think this reality is also a genuinely hopeful one. It reminds me that the world is also capable of change. Just the world shapes how we think and what we value, how we think and what we value can also shape the world. We don’t have to accept that a person’s success is measured by his wealth, or that our primary goal in life is to fulfill our personal happiness. By imagine a different world, we can live in a world that is of we choosing, instead of letting the world choose who we are.
P.S. I have been asked the question: “what decides a person’s value?” I think, just like everything else, we give something value, when it is important to us. But if the question is: “what, in my opinion, decide my value?” This is a question that different people would certainly give different answers. And different people in our lives would also have different opinions about how we should live our lives. But to me, my value is not decided by how other think of me, nor is it decided by how I think of myself. It is weighted by how I treat others. We all suffer from a terrible curse, that we can never perfectly communicate our subject experience to each other even with the help of language and art. As a result, we will always be the protagonist in our own story. Other people will never be as important as we are in that narrative. It is not hard to recognize our own importance. But it is tremendously more difficult and rare to give other people in our lives the same weight. But just like everything else, isn’t that rarity is one of the important factor for deciding values?
RhaPsoDySea 