People don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear what makes them feel. Some want to feel good, and some want to feel bad, depending on what they’ve become most comfortable or familiar with due to their conditioning and past trauma. 

Truth is whatever anyone perceives as their reality in the present moment. It is the condensation of sensory input—external stimuli we’re able to detect with our senses—, filtered through our complex mental construct, that builds on beliefs, experiences, and our emotional ups and downs. When people speak of truth they mean something highly subjective, yet which they believe to be universal. Without an open mind, it’s simply too much of a stretch for us to acknowledge that different people have built different mental constructs that result in different realities.

When people talk to each other, most of the time, they’re not really interested in each other’s truths. They have already built and highly invested in their own. Anyone else’s truth seems to be nothing but a contradiction or an affront to our own, an inconvenient obstacle to overcome. Most often we’re not really interested in the content of what anyone is saying. We only want to feel. Either complimented and validated, which is so joyful and comforting for the ego. Or threatened and challenged, which makes us so sad and angry and triggers our excitement for fight-and-flight responses.

I catch myself in this behavior more often than my ego would like to admit. This happens especially when I’m already tense or confused because one or more of my basic needs are not properly met or because I’m already operating at the edge of my mental capacity. My mind is not free. Someone expresses their truth and I react with anger, disapproval, or denial. Or I get complimented and a mixture of pleasant feelings washes through my body. In either case, I don’t fully reflect on the content at that moment.

Most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. People consequently ascribe immense importance to what they feel, craving to experience more and more pleasures, while avoiding pain.
[…]
Our feelings are no more than fleeting vibrations, changing every moment, like the ocean waves. If five minutes ago I felt joyful and purposeful, now these feelings are gone, and I might well feel sad and dejected. So if I want to experience pleasant feelings, I have to constantly chase them, while driving away the unpleasant feelings. Even if I succeed, I immediately have to start all over again, without ever getting any lasting reward for my troubles. —YUVAL NOAH HARARI

I believe it is beneficial for anyone to ask oneself the question about how they want to engage in interpersonal communication. 

No doubt, pure instinctual and emotional reactions are natural, useful, and deeply encoded into our genetic and behavioral heritage. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it often be better to listen to the truth in what people communicate and share? As far as I can tell, reacting blindly with anger, pride, or denial—even joy at times—does not serve anyone, particularly not ourselves. What would serve us much better is to not let us sway by praise or confrontation but to take in and seek to understand the other person’s truth being shared. Anyone’s truth carries information we can lear from. Sometimes more about that person and sometimes more about ourselves.

However, emotions and feelings should not be suppressed. They should be observed. They should be felt and experienced as they come and go. That’s precisely what makes us human. That being said, if we want to grow we should practice listening. Truly listen. And then to engage in real dialogues in which we expand on each other’s truths. Instead of just having monologues where each one waits for a pause so they can blurt out their own opinion. 

The more we practice not identifying ourselves with our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and the infinite circle of their mutual dependencies the more we generate the capacity to both receive the others’ truths as well as to express our own and consequently to draw from their immense wisdom. 

To do that we have to practice to shift our awareness to not just listen to the other person but to our bodies and minds as well.

Have a phenomenal week!

⏤Ferdinand

✨ Sparks

🌐 Website: RULES of THUMB

Hilarious site that claims to provide “Every Rule of Thumb on Earth in One Place!” and actually offers useful tips and tricks.

SHIFTING GEARS ON A BICYCLE
If the gear is too high, your legs will tire before your lungs. If the gear is too low, your lungs will tire first.

WATCHING BIRDS
Study the bird, not the field guide. The bird will fly away. The guide won’t.

CALCULATING DISTANCES
A light-year (the distance light travels in a year) is to an Astronomical Unit (the distance from the Earth to the Sun) as a mile is to an inch.

🧬 Science & Research: But Do Porn Sites Get More Traffic than TikTok, OpenAI, and Zoom?

Intimacy and sexual expression are one of, if not the strongest, underlying motivators for human behavior. This recent piece of research shows how worldwide traffic to any of the top three porn sites is higher, by far, than traffic to any of the following: Amazon, Netflix, Yahoo, TikTok, OpenAI, Zoom, LinkedIn, or The Weather Channel.

Using a set of metrics including indicators of monthly unique visitors and monthly pageviews, the top three pornography sites were more highly ranked than several legacy household name sites (Amazon, Netflix, Yahoo) and either soon-to-be or already household name sites (TikTok, OpenAI, Zoom). The disparity in total visits was often substantial. Xvideos, the top ranked pornography site, had 700,000,000 more total visits than Amazon and 900,000,000, 1,100,000,000, 1,300,000,000, 1,500,000,000, and 1,800,000,000 more total visits than TikTok, OpenAI, Linkedin, Netflix, and The Weather Channel, respectively.

Results for the remaining three metrics also revealed some interesting patterns. First, the four pornography sites (xvideos.com, pornhub.com, xnxx.com, xhamster.com) had the lowest bounce rates (i.e., the lowest percentage of visitors who leave a website after only viewing one page). Second, a pornography site (xnxx.com) had the highest pages per visit result, and, with the exception of Amazon, Xvideos and Pornhub had higher pages per visit figures than the comparator nonpornographic sites (pages per visit scores indicate the average number of pages visitors view on a site within a single session). Third, with the exception of Twitch and Reddit, Xvideos had a higher average visit duration result than the comparator nonpornographic sites. In sum, the Similarweb data suggested that at least some pornographic websites have comparable (or higher) levels of global reach and engagement to both legacy and avant-garde nonpornographic digital media properties.

🎬 YouTube Video: Richard Feynman Fire

Richard Feynman was undoubtedly one of the greatest teachers of modern history. He was a theoretical physicist recognized for his work in the fields of particle physics as well as quantum mechanics and electodynamics, in which he received the Nobel Prize in 1965. He also assisted in the development of the atomic bomb. In this excerpt he explains the phenomenon of fire through the cycle of carbon dioxide.

The light and heat that’s coming out, that’s the light and heat of the sun that went in. So it’s sort of stored sun that’s coming out when you burn a log.

💡 This Week’s Wisdom

Rejection exists for a reason – it’s a means to keep people apart who are not good for each other.

From Models by MARK MANSON.
Captured and resurfaced using the phenomenal Kindle reader.

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