We are obsessed with individualism

Apparently, being an intelligent species in a vast empty universe just doesn’t make people feel special anymore. On the other hand, nipple piercings and Bob Marley posters seem to do the trick. Marketers have been exploiting our desire to be “individuals” for decades. For all I know, the individualist movement, like Valentine’s Day, has been a marketing scheme for all these years. There is, however, a very good reason why everyone strives to be an individual, but many don’t realize the struggle requires more than a credit card.

An individualist is someone who derives their lifestyle choices internally, not externally. In other words, they’re not influenced by society, religion, community or any other communal entity in the way they live their life. An individualist may share common goals as these entities e.g. helping people, achieving high social status, seek power, etc. The difference is that individualists find their own creative and often unique ways of reaching these goals. A successful individualist has a strong reality i.e. strong conviction in how he sees the world and his role in it. Having high self-esteem and self-confidence enables this person to be confident in their differing beliefs about how to live their life.

There is a special breed of individualists that people admire and hope to one day become. These are the people whose reality is so strong that others become infected by it and start believing it too. These are the trend setters – people who do things differently and confidently enough that it becomes “cool”. Other people begin to copy their lifestyle choices hoping to emit the same sort of value.

Here is the interesting part – the people who copy the trend setters think they are “self-expressing” or “being an individual”. What is actually happening is, ironically, the complete opposite.

These people don’t have the mental ability to be individualists. They lack the necessary self-esteem and self-confidence to develop a strong reality. They seek out lifestyle choices that are externally validating because they don’t have enough self-confidence to internally validate them. For example, consider the hordes of people, from all ethnicities, who dress like rap artists. Here is a lifestyle choice that is pre-selected to emit value. It is easy to see why these people depend on products or things other than themselves to give them their fix of self-confidence/esteem. Their satisfaction with their lifestyle choices begins to depend on what other people think – the exact opposite of an individualist.

The lesson here is this: people say they seek to be individuals, but their actions say they still need the support of a communal entity. This obsession with individualism has caused people to undermine the value of a shared community.

For those born in 1955 the likelihood of a major depression at some point in life is, in many countries, three times or more greater than for their grandparents according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. He also states that the chances of having a major depression before age thirty-four is ten times greater for those born in 1954 than those born in 1914. Martin Seligman, psychologist at UPenn, proposed: “For the last thirty or forty years we’ve seen the ascendance of individualism and a waning of support from the community and extended family. That means a loss of resources that can buffer you against setbacks and failures.”

Mentally weak people aren’t always under the right circumstances to improve their self-esteem and confidence. Pretending to be individuals is an ineffective way of buffering oneself against setbacks and failures. Maybe we need to make community building cool again or downplay individualism.

Grinds my Gears

Throughout my time in Davis I have encountered many things that grind my gears i.e. things that annoy me (for example: naggers). And hence, I decided to make a top ten list of things that grinded my gears throughout my stay here. I hope I don’t end up sounding like a grandpa complaining about his retirement center; I just want to share my gear-grinding list with people who may be able to relate.

10. Wellman Hall

People give the Social Science building (the death star) a bad rep for being hard to navigate, but little do they realize Wellman is no different. There is no logical connection between the room numbers and their relative location to other rooms. Ninety five percent of my classes were at Wellman and I still find my classes by method of “guess and check.”

9. Students who ask what will be on the test

Students rarely ask questions in class in fear of sounding stupid, but ironically, this question still gets asked. I am not referring to questions like, “Will chapter 9 be on the final?” Or, “Is the final comprehensive?” I am talking about these: “For the final, will you give us, like, a formula and then, like, tell us what to plug in it?” Or, “What part of the study guide should we study?” College isn’t supposed to be easy – deal with it.

8. Teachers who don’t go over the green sheet

Green sheet day exists to give students an easy transition from vacationing to learning. It pisses me off when teachers don’t waste the first day of classes going over the green sheet and letting the class out early.

7. Frat party bathrooms

During a frat party, guys and girls are forced to share a bathroom together. What bothers me most about this ordeal is that group of girls who think every guy in there is a sexual predator wanting to catch a glimpse of them pissing. They take turns body guarding the stall door as they gaze at me with their evil eye. I end up feeling like a guy walking around Chuck E. Cheese with a big sign that reads, “Hi, I am a pedophile.”

6. People who bring food to class

Soda and chips are fine; I am talking about the heavy stuff. For some reason the smell of food doesn’t sit well in a classroom. People bring in their shitty meat balls from home and hot box the class with a rancid meaty aroma. If you’re going to be eating in class, you better be eating Febreeze.


5. The obsessive compulsive note takers

If I shot them with a horse tranquilizer they might just function like a normal human being. Every utterance and every chalk scratch is meticulously documented by these busy beavers. I get stressed out just by watching them.

4. Co-ho burritos

These burritos are a product of immoral behavior; their creator has broken the golden rule of burrito making: thou shall make a burrito the way thyself would want a burrito. Clearly, no one would construct a burrito this sloppy for oneself. The burrito’s innards are always segmented into their own section, as opposed to being evenly distributed amongst the other ingredients. If I threw this burrito in the air like a baton, its mid-air spin would resemble that of a half-empty water bottle – that’s unacceptable. This one bugs me the most because I always go back naively thinking, “this time it’s going to be different,” but it never is.

3. Racism

Racism just grinds my gears like no other.

2. People who call themselves pre-med

UC Davis doesn’t have a pre-med major; therefore, calling yourself pre-med is pointless. To me, it means you’re thinking of applying to med school and that you’re a pretentious ass who probably wants to be a doctor for the social capital.

1. The Dining Commons (DC)

Eating at the DC is a lose-lose situation. Instead of going to an all-you-can eat sushi buffet, for the same price, you can go to the DC! The problem is: sushi tastes much better than DC food. In order for me to feel like I am getting my money’s worth at the DC, I need to eat way more than a sane doctor would recommend. In the end, I am left with a kicking food baby and a skinnier wallet. No wonder they force freshmens to pay for this.

Rationality and Drug Taking

As most of you are college students, by now, you’ve probably all had the “drug conversation” with your friends. This stimulating discussion usually starts off when one of your friends just tried shrooms and won’t shut up about it. After he pontificates about how his whimsical journey with the drug made him a better person, the discussion digresses towards drugs-taking in general. Some conclude that they must try a hard drug at one point in their lives – others vow never to do so. Eventually, an interesting point is brought up: is it bad to receive happiness solely from a drug?

In my opinion, this question isn’t only fun to ponder – it might determine the future of humanity! I realize I am taking a several inferential steps in making this point so hear me out. First off, consider the following hypothetical: some hippie scientist invents a drug that would, indefinitely, put you into a vegetative state, but the tradeoff is an infinite supply of happiness and pleasure. If people decide they would be better off on this drug, chaos will ensue.

I might be getting carried away; surely there will be people who would refuse the drug. People aren’t selfish; they wouldn’t want to hurt their loved ones by turning into a smiling vegetable. Let’s make things more interesting then. Imagine the drug only changed your preferences around making you receive great amounts of happiness for easily attainable goals. For example, baking a cake now gives you an orgasmic feeling and taking a shower feels like winning the lottery. This drug would be changing your utility function.

For those of you who haven’t heard of this gem of a concept, it means this: a function that inputs world events and outputs “utils” or i.e. a unit of satisfaction/happiness. There are certain world events that correspond to a quantity of personal happiness; a utility function models this relationship. For example, eating an apple corresponds to some measure of utility (read: happiness). This drug would mess with your utility function in a way that would make it a lot easier for you to optimize your utility. No longer will you care about getting married and having a family, that’s too hard. Instead you’ll be baking cakes and taking showers for the rest of your life (voluntarily of course). Would you take the drug? Would a utilitarian be morally obligated to force everyone to take the drug?

We are utility maximizers; we want to attain as much happiness as we can. One subtle detail about our utility function is that we receive negative utility for knowingly deciding to change our utility function to a new one that conflicts with the old one. Our utility function can and does change overtime; however, we won’t want to choose to change it. Imagine I gave you a pill that would make you want to hate your family. An additional stipulation: hating your family will give you a lot more utility than the utility you currently get from loving your family. The intuitive utility maximizing decision would be to take the pill. On the other hand, since taking the pill would leave you with a utility function that’s incongruent with your current one, you will not take the pill. Same reason you won’t take a drug that will make you bake cakes and take showers all the time. It might distract you from your current goals and aspirations (you’d make baking cakes a higher priority than having friends). In other words, even if the new preferences will give you overall more happiness, you'll still prefer your old preferences.

You might be thinking, “Who cares? This drug doesn’t exist yet.” Well, it does; this dilemma exists for people who haven’t tried shrooms yet. According to discovery.com, “61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.” Assuming you won’t get a bad trip, is it rational to take the drug? Depends on whether the drug changes your utility function and whether it conflicts with the older version. I doubt a psychedelic experience can help me optimize my current utility function better than my sober self. Therefore, I conclude that it must, in fact, change my preference ordering. I would rather keep my preferences the way they are now, of course.

The Lack of Empathy

Soldiers of war are not psychopath killers – they are victims of robbery, the robbery of a human quality called empathy. With certain external forces, we have the ability to lose this basic emotion. Analyzing the Israel and Gaza conflict, I have discovered that the loss of empathy is the underlying cause of the controversy. My objective in this column is not to prove which side is the victim or aggressor, but to share some of my thoughts on why I think there is a controversy in the first place.

I believe the Israel and Gaza debate is being approached incorrectly. Supporters on each side of the argument try throwing at each other facts, as if facts alone will make apparent which side is right. The controversy, however, is fundamentally a case of moral ambiguity. This is why I think a more philosophical approach is appropriate.

But first, I must delineate several assumptions that, in my opinion, aren’t far-fetched to make: 1) Hamas is a terrorist organization in that they intentionally target civilians. 2) Israel has a right to defend its citizens. 3) There are innocent civilians in Gaza.

Now that the assumptions are out of the way, let’s scrutinize the situation further. Hamas would not stop firing rockets towards Israel even after Israel’s threat of an attack. Since Israel has the right to defend itself, Israel is allowed to take some measure to deter the rockets. Israel chose to target Hamas and its resources with an airstrike. These targets were close to innocent civilians, partly because Hamas made that so and partly because Gaza is a densely populated area. The outcome of Israel’s airstrikes has led to upwards of 850 Palestinians dead with around 25 percent civilians. The airstrike has not deterred Palestinian fighters from shooting more rockets toward Israel, so far killing 13 soldiers and 3 civilians (these numbers may be higher after I write this).

The majority of Israeli citizens support the attacks made on Gaza. On the other hand, most of the rest of the world believes the attacks were disproportionate. Specifically, the Arab population has been most outspoken about their disagreement. This made me think about how so many different populations can be exposed to the same information yet arrive at the opposite conclusions. The reason this happens is because a mixture of nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda disconnects each side from empathizing with one another.

The clearest example of lack of empathy is Hamas and their terrorist tactics. They put innocent Israeli lives on the line and treat their civilians like hostages in order to accomplish their objective. If they cared about people more than they do their unattainable goal, we would be one step closer to ending the conflict. Israel also commits a lack of empathy, but in my opinion, in a more subtle manner.

Unlike Hamas, Israel does not specifically target civilians with the intention of killing civilians. However, they do accept that civilian casualties are collateral damage, another cost of war, a suitable means towards defending their citizens. Collateral damage is an ambiguous moral concept, but throughout the past and present it seems like some dose of collateral damage is accepted. For example, imagine a group of a thousand gunmans shooting aimlessly inside a populated city. Say you have a button that you can press that will instantly kill all of them, but one innocent person will die. If this was the only option, I think it is safe to say that most people would press the button; that one person is a suitable cost of war.

Most Israelis believe that the airstrikes had the appropriate amount of damage or i.e. the appropriate amount of collateral damage. There does become a point, however, when the collateral damage is too high and is not justified by the outcome. Most of the rest of the world, specifically the Arab population, believes the attacks were disproportionate. To me, this means that Israelis care less about Palestinian civilians than the rest of the world does. I could say the reverse too – the rest of the world doesn’t care enough about Israelis! I believe that both cases are true. Nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda keep removing empathy from the human relationship. We need to overcome our biases and truly understand one another, only then will the controversy fall apart.

Sneaky Advertisements

Every product on the market has either functional or emotional value. Take for example an Apple laptop computer: you may value its usefulness around $1000, but you’re willing to pay $1,500 for it; this means your emotional value for it is $500. Apple has successfully made you pay $500 more for value that only exists in your mind. Advertisers know that in order to make big profit margins they need to instill lots of emotional value into their ubiquitous product. As frugal shoppers, we can’t afford emotional value. Before we go mindlessly shopping again, we need to realize how advertisers are trying to mark up prices in exchange for some unnecessary emotional value. Below, I have a list of common products we buy and the overlooked emotional value advertisers have implanted in them.

Outdoor Clothing
The outdoorsy industry has the sneakiest marketing schemes. Presumably, these outdoor stores are your only provider of equipment you need when you drive too far from civilization. They say they are selling functionality, but what they’re really selling is an image. The average hiker doesn’t need a jacket with interior mesh pockets, polyester chin guard, and light-weight recyclable nylon shells. Only hard-core hikers benefit from all this junk, the rest of us buy it because we get to pretend we are hard-core too. And why the hell is everything pea green and cement gray?

Workout Supplements

I never thought I would be intimidated by a bottle of nutrients until I came across a bucket of Magnesium Super Charge Xtreme! I once passed by one and I swear I heard it call me a little bitch when it saw me carrying a box of cookies. Companies create these ridiculous packages because the consumer decides which supplement to buy based on whichever label conveys the baddest attitude. They have no idea what 1500mg of Tribulus Terrestris does, but the label has a guy benching a million pounds so it must be good! These nutrients are cheap to make and are present in most foods; these supplements will only sell for $30 with about $25 worth of emotional value.


XXL Condoms

Men are so obsessed with their size that they are willing to spend money pretending to have a foot-long. 90% of men measure between 5 to 7 inches; anything beyond or below that is exceptionally rare. Why do they market Magnum XXL condoms so heavily when a normal one can cover a grapefruit? Why don’t they advertise Pee-wee XXS condoms for the unfortunate bottom tenth percent of men? Condom companies don’t want you to associate their brand with tiny dicks, that’s not going to sell. They know they can mark up their prices a few bucks with a product that associates the buyer with a big one.

Alcohol

Alcohol companies have many advertising tricks up their sleeve, most of which we, smart shoppers, are aware of. There is one trick they have that I think a lot of people don’t notice. Their commercials are starting to emphasis the fact that we should drink responsibly and not drink and drive. They go as far as taking 25% of the commercial time to tell us this. By telling us this, they make us feel better for buying their brand; a socially conscious brand that cares about the lives it kills. It makes us feel better about drinking in general; it reminds us that drinking in moderation is fine and that we shouldn’t feel guilty about it.



Products with breast cancer ribbons on the box

Companies know that buyers like to help a cause as long as they don’t have to go out of their way too much to do it. In theory, putting a bunch of pink ribbons on the corner of a Cheerios box should help with sales. But why are so many food products obsessed with breast cancer all of a sudden? You may find the following saying a little disturbing in this context, but here it is anyway – sex sells. Companies donate to breast cancer research because it is marketable. You don’t want to be thinking of prostate cancer when you're scarfing down cereal. Companies have finally found a disease that isn’t disgusting enough to put on food labels, that’s it. Most companies already give to charity; breast cancer is just a cause they can gloat about. You aren’t buying from an especially virtuous company, just a clever one.

Facebook Defines Your Identity

In today’s web 2.0 generation, it’s not official until it’s on Facebook. That’s right - nothing is really official until you’ve solidified its existence on public display via Facebook. If you just woke up with a giant hang-over because of last night’s Jager Bombing and didn’t mention it in your Facebook status, did it really ever happen? If you change your birthday date a month forward on Facebook, would that be your new birthday? If you don’t even have a Facebook, do you really exist? Just like Big Brother in the book 1984, you control your past (or at least some of it) by controlling the memories people have about your past.

An interesting thing arises from all of this; people are beginning to use Facebook as way to make things official for themselves! Take for example the relationship status feature. There is always that awkward period of time that occurs when you first go out with someone and when you decide to declare each other as “in a relationship.” People sometimes feel that their commitments are not official until they publically announce it. This is because our culture values a person who is consistent with their beliefs. A person who is inconsistent with their beliefs is perceived as indecisive, confused, two-faced, or illogical. On the other hand, consistency is associated with being logical, rational, honest, or stable. When you publically announce a belief you make yourself vulnerable to being labeled inconsistent. This explains the hesitation period; you’re unsure if you want to commit to a certain identity because after it’s on Facebook it’s hard to turn back.

I believe that people implicitly already know this, maybe it’s something subconscious. They think that what you display on Facebook are a bunch of well thought-out commitments. In other words, your Facebook buddies will judge you by what you write. This is why Facebook has the power of defining your identity.

My Theory of Morality

I have always been non-religious, believed that nothing is black or white, and that life is inherently meaningless. A religious fundamentalist would cringe at the thought of having a person with my beliefs to be a part of his society. However, if he were to examine my life’s history he would find me to be a pretty moral, law-abiding person. For as long as I can remember I have been struggling to find a logical justification for being a moral person. No matter how often I thought about the meaninglessness of being moral, I continued striving to do good and straying away from doing evil. Well, the confusion is over; I have finally come up with a rational explanation of why everyone should be moral.

The bad definition of “moral”

Partly why morality is so confusing is because of how the word is conventionally thought of. People think that a moral action (e.g. it is bad to murder) should be applied in any situation and for any thinking agent. This way of using the word makes any moral guide (think Ten Commandments) vulnerable to all sorts of moral dilemmas. For example, should someone kill a person to save 100 others? Should someone die for their country or for anything? I have broadened the definition of “moral” in a way that leads to no moral ambiguity.

My definition of “moral,” which I will refer to as “moralL”

MoralsL: the set of behaviors and actions (that affect others in any way) that one should use in a collaboration or co-existence of two or more people in order to maximize personal utility. Whenever there is a group of two or more people that can benefit from each other, there exists a set of rules-of-interaction which, if followed correctly, will maximize the individual’s utility/happiness. These rules may change depending on the people within the group and the number of people in the group. You want to be moralL because you only benefit yourself from doing so.

Evolutionary explanation for moral misconceptions

It makes sense that natural selection favors the human/human ancestors that interact with others in such a way that increases their fitness. Humans can have non-zero-sum gains that increase their fitness by interacting with other humans in a certain way. I’ll call this set of rules-of-interactions as moralsE. Those genes that made humans predisposed or programmed to interact in a way that maximizes their fitness (i.e. morallyE) would dominate the gene pool. Now we have a population of humans that get positive emotional reinforcements (but not always) from behaving morallyE. The set of moralsE may only be a sub-set of the set of moralL or be completely different! Today’s religions/societies try following a moral code that contains some combination of moralsL and moralsE. Our emotional impulses bound us to moralsE that aren’t contained in the set of moralsL.

Why we should only follow moralsL and not moralsE

First of all, understand that our reproductive fitness can be a function of our happiness and therefore a part of our moralL code. If there are two conflicting actions (that affects others), option one leads to a 10% increase in happiness and option two leads to a 5% increase in happiness with a 2% increase in reproductive success (assuming the happiness associated with a 2% increase in reproductive success is already accounted for in the 5% increase in happiness), I don’t see why we should pick option two over option one. There is no reason to increase our reproductive fitness other than for the fact that it sometimes makes us happy to do so. In a universe empty of absolute right and wrong, why bother following any other moral code that doesn’t have to do with maximizing personal happiness?

Now to answer questions that I know are on your mind

If someone maximizes their happiness by going on murderous rampages, why should that be a moral deed? You would first need to accept the unlikely idea that someone maximizes their happiness by dramatically increasing their probability of dying (capital punishment/avengers/self-defense by victims) and sitting in prison in exchange for killing some people. Some of these people do exist so this isn’t a trivial example. Sure, they are acting morallyL, but expect natural selection to weed these people out quickly. Natural selection has favored those genes that make our happiness a function of other people’s well-being. Of course, not everyone has these genes or has them turned on, but there isn’t much to worry. If natural selection doesn’t weed them out, a benevolent society (that contains a majority of people who care about its members) will weed them out.

How this moral theory explains moral dilemmas

Should someone die for their country or for anything? You should only die for something if not dying for that something leads you to a life of such negative utility that it leads you to commit suicide anyways. If I don’t die for my country, will I live a life with such embarrassment, sadness, guilt, etc. that I would want to commit suicide and die either way? This same reasoning applies to such decisions of whether you should die or kill someone in order to save n number of people. What about going to the army and merely risking your life for your country? In this case you have to ask yourself whether the positive expected utility of risking your life for your country (or any cause) is greater than the negative expected utility of doing so. For example, if you had a 10% increase in probability of dying by going to the army, you might want to consider it, but not if it is a 50% increase. If saving your family from death requires you to increase your probability of dying by 50% you might consider it. I am just demonstrating why risking dying for a cause is all relative to your expected utility. Should we stop the genocide in Darfur? Well, that answer depends on whether net expected utility is positive or not. The surprising conclusion is that it may not even be worth it to stop the genocide (maybe we are better off just deterring it or slowing it down). There is no absolute right or wrong, there just is what there is: a bunch of evolved beings with different yet similar utility functions interacting with other beings in way that they hope leads to maximizing their individual utility.

How this theory affected my moral behavior

It hasn’t. I still do and believe in the same things, my preferences haven’t changed. What has changed is my perspective on moral ambiguity. With my theory, I no longer see moral dilemmas as unanswerable problems. There is always a rational moralL answer that differs from person to person. That moralL answer is the one that leads to maximizing happiness. We shouldn’t let things stray us away from acting morallyL like a religion telling you what they think is best for you.