Denial Prayers

"Ahmad is in love with a girl named Fatimah, and nothing he wishes that much other than marrying her. Sadly, the feelings are not mutual, though Fatimah keeps her friendly attitude toward the man. As the result, Ahmad's family is concerned over the fact that Ahmad is reaching his 30's but is still not married. Thus, Ahmad's parents set him up with a nice girl, Aishah. Though Aishah is a girl every man would dream of marrying, Ahmad knows that feelings can't be forced, and his heart is still loyal towards Fatimah. Until he becomes thoroughly devastated and hopeless over his unrequited love, he begins to consider the fact that he just has to marry Aishah and gets this over with. So, he says yes to his parents and Ahmad's family starts the wedding plan right away. In the midst of the planning, Ahmad's hope to be united with his love is up and down - and many of the times too he thinks that until he is actually married, he still has a chance to be with Fatimah. He prays and prays so Allah would make Fatimah has a change of heart and would actually love him in return..."

The story above is fictional.

My post here is nothing about wedding and love or anything related to this. This post poses a question I have been attempting to answer these past few days. At what point of time do your prayers are a  hope or a sign of denial? Though it has been confirmed that Ahmad would marry Aishah, Ahmad keeps his hopes up that anything could happen and Fatimah might actually fall in love with him. The thing is, my question is, Ahmad's prayers, are they hopeful or are they actually denial prayers?

We Muslims have been taught that Allah's power surpasses anything. He can control weathers, the earth, the flow of the life, and also human hearts. So, by this logic, praying that there is a chance Fatimah might accept Ahmad as long as there is time. Allah certainly has the power to change Fatimah's heart. But to judge by the standard of this realistic world, Ahmad is being in denial that Fatimah would not accept him, he keeps having the "fake hope" that anything might happen. So, again, the question is, when is it time to stop praying and start realizing that you need to move forward?

I don't have the answer to this and I hope some of you do. I am currently experiencing the similar situation like Ahmad's, except mine is related to my choices of universities for PhD. What I'm sure is, perhaps this wise heart will know for itself if it's time to stop praying and move on to what is available.

Fairy Tales (Part 2)

In part 1, I talked about how fairy tales stand apart from other kinds of stories we call as fables or myths. Fairy tales have certain unique characteristics that enable them to possess the ability to guide children within their own imaginative capacity. In this part-2, again referencing to Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses Of Enchantment," I will give an example of a popular fairy tale to show how it addresses a child's conflict in its own empathic way. The story below is written in my own language.

The Fisherman and the Jinny 

"Once upon a time, there was a fisherman in the sea. In the calm sea, he cast his net four times. The first cast gave him a dead donkey, the second a jar filled with sand and mud, and the third was just broken glasses. However, the fourth cast gave him something that he did not foresee finding - a copper jar that contained a huge Jinny. The Jinny was not friendly and kind. All he wanted to do if he was released was to kill the person who released him out of the anger of being trapped for so long. Trying to save his life, the fisherman thought how this beast could be defeated. The fisherman asked, "Oh Jinny, you are a big creature! Are you sure that you came from that very small copper jar?" The Jinny assured the fisherman that he was from there, leading the fisherman to challenge him to fit right back in. When the Jinny did so, the fisherman quickly capped the jar back and threw it to the sea where it belonged."

The fairy tale above tells the story between a huge beast and an ordinary man. Logically, a man with his strength would not be able to defeat a huge beast physically. But he instead used his wit and intelligence to outsmart the Jinny. At last, the Jinny was defeated by his own idiocy.

The fairy tale acknowledges the very fact that in every child's life, there will be a "beast" that he or she would want to get rid of. Be it the parents, a bully at school, a teacher, or anyone whose physical attribute would defeat the child's. The Jinny's desire to kill the person who releases him is not within the logical sense. In our world, the more a person is trapped, the more he or she is grateful when released - but this is not what happens in a child's mind if that child feels entrapped for a long time. What a child feels would be revenge and resentment because it takes someone too long to release him or her. When someone finally reaches out to him, he lashes out.

To a person who doesn't understand, this child will be treated as one who rebels and needs to be punished, but to a person who does will try to put him- or herself in the child's shoe and how egocentric and single-dimensional a child's mind is. As Bruno explained in his book, we cannot expect a child to be able to explain his feeling and say things like, "I'm angry because..." Even half the adult population cannot truly understand themselves why they are angry most of the time.

The fairy tale, if read to the child, can give him or her a sense of direction in imaginative form what and why he feels that way. The story can be empathic to the child's inner need and conflict. Not just this fairy tale, others like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk all have their own purposes and certain conflicts that actually happen in a child's life. For you parents out there, start reading for your children fairy tales and let them run their imagination and fantasy.

Fairy Tales (Part 1)

I already made a post about this book I am reading, "The Uses Of Enchantment." It is a book that talks about how important fairy tales are in children's life - because it is a means for them to seek meaning to their own existence. In this first part of 2-part post I am going to talk further about this point. I will talk about some of ground rules fairy tales need to be like in order to have the effects.

1) Because children's mental processing is very simplistic, fairy tales characters need to be one-dimensional. If one character is evil, then he or she needs to portray as an evil character throughout the whole story. This can give the children clearer choices of what they need to act and behave were they in the same situation.

2) Fairy tales sometimes have non-human characters that have human-like qualities like communicating and having desires. The author asserts that stories like "The Three Little Pigs," "Beauty And The Beast," and some others that have non-human characters acting like humans conform to how a child thinks, fantasizing, and imagining better than other kinds of stories.

3) One significant difference between a fairy tale and a fable or a myth is again the human qualities possessed by the characters. By "human," the author means it is not overmoralistic and heroic like the Gods in Greek myths, for example. Characters in a fairy tale is also presented with choices where one of the choices is always so more tempting and distracting from the main goal. They will think about it, and sometimes even act on it, but they quickly revert back to what brings them to the journey in the first place.

4) Traditional fairy tales are told verbally, unlike modern tales that use pictures and graphics to aid the storytelling. By only telling the stories verbally, children are left with their own imagination on how the stories go on. They can freely imagine how the characters look like and how they continue to walk on their journey. By using pictures to aid the storytelling, children's fantasies are restricted.

5) Fairy tales are not afraid to use extreme points of cases to be the integral part of the stories, and by this, the author means to use cases where supposedly only adults could comprehend - like a death of a loved ones, being lost, poverty, being adopted, an abusive parent, etc. The author believes whether or not the adults like to expose their children to the adult matters, children still face them everyday and they need a means to handle with them.

There are more characteristics and rules that make fairy tales as what they are. But these are some of the important points to note when talking about how fairy tales should be like. Modern stories are very light and only deal with limited conflicts that adults think children could only handle. But we must recognize that children also have conflicts and they need a guide as to how to manage them, and fairy tales can do that.

You Can't Absolutely Know Until You Are There

Stanley Milgram shocked the world with his experiment that found that humans were actually easy to destroy a life - as long as they are put under confinement of an authority. Prior to conducting the experiment, Milgram asked a number of people, including ones who are familiar with the field of psychology, if they could go as far as killing someone if put under the pressure by the authority. Majority of them were confident that they would not, that they would have the capability to stand up for what is right and actually disobey the command of the authority. But the experiment yielded 65% as many people who actually "killed" another human being because the experimenter (who acted as the authority) asked them to do so.

I already talked about Milgram's study on destructive obedience, but one thing I would like to point out here is the study done before the actual obedience experiment - the survey. It is amazing how sure we are when asked about a hypothetical situation. This is called as Illusory Superiority. Illusory Superiority is a term coined to describe individuals who believe that they better than what is expected. They often overestimate their own performance, ability, skills, and sense of right and wrong. When Milgram asked the individuals if they could kill another person if asked by an authority and they largely said "no," while what really happened was 65% of them actually could, they exhibited Illusory Superiority.

Perhaps Illusory Superiority is related to empathic ability - not to another person, but to a hypothetical future. When we put our own selves in the hypothetical situation, we fail to really feel what we would feel in that situation, leading us to overestimate.

Lesson of the say is that we need to really consider several factors before making any rushed conclusion about what we would do in a hypothetical situation because this is beneficial in a number of ways. I also believe if you are careful when it comes to this issue, racism, prejudice, unexpected failure, and a lot of more could be prevented.

Professionalism Is Maturity

Have you ever noticed that your boss seems to be in favor of a certain employee yet he still manages to look professional doing it? Have you ever noticed how much professional your lecturer seems yet a student fails and he saves that student and another fails and he lets the student be. Have you ever noticed that one of your authority figures who has been in various professional situations and who has been trained to practice professionalism still "laughs to the other member's joke louder than yours"?

Growing up studying in higher learning institutions, I've been taught that various situations in a workplace and relationships with our work colleagues require us to be and act professional. I used to denote, and I still do, that professionalism can sometimes be too overrated. But lately, my experience dealing with some people who work in a workplace that oozes professionalism tells me that professionalism always seems to be temporal, and very very inconsistent. This is not an overrating, this is professionalism used in practices for the sake of its hype and trend, rather than for its advantages and importance of use.

My idea of professionalism is to treat all your employees equally, regardless your personal feelings (positive or negative), if you are a boss; or to not let unnecessary emotional ventilation to people who do not have any personal relationship with you; Or to not mix personal feeling with professional ones (if you happen to work in the same place with your wife, for example). But I believe that to totally eradicate personal relationships in the same work setting can have its own drawbacks (e.g. not to talk to your student in the hallway, to have the belief "it's my student's job to text me, not mine," my employee should not sit in the same table with me, etc.). In addition, a workplace or a learning institution can work better and more smoothly if everyone understands each other in a more personal level, rather than limiting knowledge of your colleagues/employees/students to only names, staff no., and the division he or she is put under.

But I digress, my original point in this post is that of all qualities professionals need to have, I believe that one of the most important ones would be have consistent treatments across individuals who work in the same setting. Sadly, from my own observations, a lot individuals who proclaim themselves to be professionals still practice backstabbing and favoritism - which is often sugarcoated by their use of the word, "professionalism" in many communications. And these people the same ones who have the professional experiences, and necessary training to show them that the opposite that they need to do is the opposite.

So, my conclusion is that true professionalism is not measured by how high your qualifications are, how many papers you have written, or how credible and reputable your university was. Professionalism is maturity and one of the only ways to nurture true professionalism is self-awareness and responsibility. I have perceived better professional personality from a person who only holds a degree than a guy who has a doctorate from an expensive university.

I am still learning and with my aspiration to be an effective educator in my field, I hope I am not inflicted with the disease that makes me want to use professionalism to cover my own way of being biased.

It's A Busy April

If you notice, I have only updated one post in this month, which is the lowest if you consider the fact that April is almost ending. Well, my life has been pretty hectic this month; with my sister's engagement, and my convocation, and being sick right after convocation, and some other stuffs that occupied 70% of my free time).

I have nothing significant to say in this post, just one thing that I realized about my life lately. I notice that revenge is only sweet before it is acted out, and to reply an evil act with kindness always feels bitter in the beginning. But in the after-event, revenge always leaves you feeling remorseful, or at least bad, and being kind makes you feel surprisingly satisfied and content (which is not what you supposedly feel before an event).

You might wonder why I am talking about this. Well, just know that some people have blossomed into a person I never knew they could before. In the meantime I have more substantial thing to say later, these are some of the snapshots  in the recent convocation.

Is It Absolutely Your Choice?

I once heard one of my acquaintances said, "I hate it when people blame the others on what would be their own doing."

He's probably right, but I would say that the statement is equally judgemental and immature as, "Others should be blamed on what happens to us..."

While the latter probably comes from a behaviorist, the former comes from someone who employs humanistic views of life too much. As we learn throughout school, we know that extreme and singular utilization of perspective when analyzing something is not encouraged because life is always complicated and multifaceted. I won't talk about the second statement because we learn about that repeatedly growing up. My focus is the first statement, which can be unfair to many out there who find themselves stuck between individualism and collectivism.

We all know the power we have to choose who we want to be, to do what we want to do, and to act what we desire. This is what humanistic psychology asserts, that individuals have the freewill to choose. But much to our dismay, a lot of what we do are the results of the environmental influences - and often we do not realize it. Let me list down some of the social psychological phenomena that happen to us that can counterargue the extreme emphasis on the power of freewill.

1) Social conformity - When confronted by uniform decision from others, we often change our behavior or attitude to conform to that decision. You hang with five of your friends at a cafe, and you are trying to decide what you want to order for dinner. One friend suggests that you order a combo meal where all six of you can eat together, but you don't want that. You want a single meal where that meal belongs to you, only to you. But the other four friends agree to him and now they look at you to know what your decision is. If you are in the real situation, I would say you are pressured to conform to the decision of others and agree to order the combo meal.

2) Destructive obedience - We all know the power authority has upon us, but do you know to what extent the authority can exercise that power? A study by Stanley Milgram, which findings shocked the world, our obedience to the authority can be as destructive to the point of taking someone's life. What it requires for us to obey blindly is just the sign of authority and the belief that whatever we do, the consequences will be faced by the authority, not us. Now, ain't that something a freewill wouldn't do?

3) Bystander Effect - Kitty Genovese, Wang Yue, Ilan Halimi, and many other unreported cases where these people were dying but none offered help. The most disturbing part is that there were a lot of witnesses in the emergency place but the person was left dying on his or her own. The most famous theory to this phenomenon is that when we are surrounded by a a good number people, we always believe someone would step up and help the person. But it's not always the case, and what usually happens is that everybody thinks that and no one actually helps.

These are just among the famous instances where our freewill almost does not matter. What about the case where a wife who won't leave her abusive husband? Or a bully victim who commits suicide? Or a person who has troubles making friends because he has an emotionally crippled family? These are real cases and we often use the simplest logic, that they choose to do it, to explain why it happens. Our behaviors and actions are always the product of the interplay between our own decision making and the influences by the environment. Perhaps the first the society needs to have is awareness, then real change can happen.

Children, Children, Where Art Thou?

Malaysia has been flooded with kidnap cases (well, being "flooded" would imply massiveness, but we can never be so "few" with kidnap cases). From Nurin, to Sharlinie, to some others, including the poor young girl named Nurul Nadirah, who was torched alive.

I still remember one discussion with my friend when I was undergoing my bachelor's studies, and he presented an idea to tackle this issue - controversial, yet might be effective. My friend hypothesizes that part of the reason why a kidnapper kidnaps a child is because of the satisfaction it brings when it becomes a national news, when it appears on the front page of major newspapers. To the mind of the kidnapper, gaining fame this way is an achievement - perhaps from the underachieved childhood that he or she experienced earlier.

So, what my friend proposed in that very heated discussion is that one way to bring the kidnapper out in the open is to, well, not to bring him out in the open. By silencing the media, and by not publicizing the particular case at all, it would make the kidnapper feels as if what he or she has done is not a big deal, and we can imagine this can upset him or her. If there is one thing most offenders share in common is that they all can experience nervous breakdown if there is one hiccup in their plan.

I'm not sure if this would be effective at all, but don't you think it's research-worthy? Don't you think it's something that we can look into? Whatever it is, I just hope that all parties in this country play their role to reduce or prevent kidnap cases at all, including the public, and the parents.

Positivity Bias

Positivity bias is a cognitive bias where older people have the tendency to recollect memories that are pleasant rather than the counterparts. It is observed among the older people, but I believe it also happens to younger people. Consider a girl who broke off her engagement to a guy she loved truly because of some reasons. Give her some times, and ask her to remember back the time she was with his ex-fiancee, you'd more likely find her thinking, or remembering about the good times rather than the reasons why she broke if off int he first place.

Positivity bias might be considered as a bias, or an error of human cognition, but for me it has its own advantages. Let me tell you a story of me spending a fortune on a delicious muffin. I went to a convention that was held in PWTC. As usual, places like PWTC are places where foods are way overpriced just because of the reputation. When I was walking around inside, I saw a food stall, at which there was a basket of scrumptious muffins, big and looking fluffy. Those muffins were sitting there practically asking me to come over and have a bite. I approached the stall owner and asked how much would one muffin cost. Much to my dismay, it was RM7 per muffin. I went to more expensive bakeries before and that was the most expensive muffins I had ever set my eyes on.

I immediately experienced cognitive dissonance, the conflict between the "you want it, so have it" thought and "that muffin is not worth my RM7". So, my solution was to buy it, of course, and I enjoyed that muffin right away. It was, as I guessed, as delicious as it looked. But still, a little part of my heart ached because of the imbalance payment to a little piece of food.

So, now, today is a couple of months after that very not-a-big-deal experience. Whenever I look at any muffins, I'd remember about the one overpriced muffin I enjoyed in PWTC, and much to my surprise, most of what I remembered was how delicious it was, and the money I spent on it was way back of my mind. I had no regret, in fact I think I'd only regret it if I didn't buy that muffin. So, I remember the one cognitive error I read about earlier, "Positivity Bias" and can't help but to be impressed how very purposeful everything is in the world.

So, perhaps Positivity Bias serves as a bias especially when you lack the skill to learn from the history, but it also serves as a way for you to enjoy life and the decision you make. Like Betty's father said to her (God, how much I miss this show...), adulthood is not about making the right decision, but about dealing with the decision you make. How can you deal with it until you can see silver lining of it right?

Once Upon A Time

I just bought a book, "The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales" with the book vouchers government so generously gave to Malaysian students. Funny, they decided to give them now. Hmm. Well, I digress. Let's talk about the book.

According to the author, the search for the meaning of life begins as early as childhood. However, it's just the method and ways of understanding that are different. While adults actively search for the meaning of life by relating to the purposes and goals, children view the meaning of life as the way to differentiate between good and evil.

Fairy tales offer these children just that. While being simplistic (that people are either good or bad, and that people are either beautiful or ugly, etc.), they successfully tell children what this life has to offer. According to the author, this is why fairy tales often deal with the unspeakable miseries, such as the death of a parent, poverty, losing one's love, because, well, it is life after all. Though they rarely could verbalize their view of life effectively, they still cope with various life's problems - just like adults.

Try to compare the traditional fairy tales with the modern children literature. The author argues that modern children literature are aimed at entertaining or informing, or both, and they are also very shallow. Children, in social sciences, are considered as minorities and in scientific inquiry, there are certain ways to communicate and study minorities. One thing that modern science fails to understand that is that children have the cognitive capacity to understand the world, although not as expressively as adults, but they have their own language - and fairy tales, are their language.

As a result of that assumption, people tend to have "gentle" and "easy" ways of communicating with children, and this is reflected in the designation of modern literature. Modern children literature always deal with problems that are "childish" and that seem to be easy to face - fighting with a friend, or the consequence of stealing a cheap snack, or failing in school. But fairy tales tell stories of life and death, loneliness, and those life challenges that we presume only adults could comprehend.

For those who are in search of an interesting, academic, yet understandable, yet leisure-ish book, "The Uses of Enchantment" is one good choice for you.