What is and how to get out of the Social Media trap - My Facebook Theory of 3 strikes and the subtle art of not giving a f**k

(Have you ever felt a sudden urge to open social media and try to make a new friend? Or have you ever felt a sudden pang of loneliness even though you have people around you?)

Hi all,

So what I am about to tell you is my 'subtle art of not giving a fuck' using which you can find who's good for you and who's not (if you are adamant that you are going to use social media anyway) and how you can not let social media affect your well-being. This is applicable on facebook and other social media sites.

So, let's begin.

Okay, so we are all aware about the use of social media and its disadvantages. The so many researchers and psychologists have already pointed them out to us, and there are so many reasons! According to a report of the study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in Nov 2018, use of social media increases depression and loneliness in individuals along with increasing anxiety and decreasing self-esteem. According to another report in early 2019, psychologists found that social media makes people's behavior to become apathetic towards others, making them self-centered. On introspection you will find this to be quite true. Even if this is not completely applicable to you because you are not a constant user of social media or you do not feel the compulsive urge to take a picture every hour or every day and post it to Instagram of yourself or what you are doing, on thinking about it you will find that this makes perfect sense for the people who do this i.e., you can see how this is applicable to them because the act of updating every little thing on social media marks the psyche of having a need to tell the world what they are doing which in turn shows the self-centeredness of that individual. This shows that slowly and steadily their nature of behavior changes to being selfish - not caring about anyone else but feeling a constant need to satisfy oneself in terms of social validation in social media and real life. This behavior is worrisome especially when the majority of the population on social media is between 12 to 22 years of age.

Try to imagine this, you like a girl so naturally you want to talk to her to get to know her, so you send her a friend request, she accepts. Now you send her a message - you say hello- and await for her reply. She sees your message but does not reply anything back. How do you feel? You feel neglected (I know I have felt that way), even abandoned in some cases. If you take a good look at your account, you will find that out of so many of your 'friends' spanning from hundreds to thousands, you actually know a very few of them, fewer in real life. And this is where my method come in. So, my theory is that the people in your friend list must justify that they are your 'friends' because what is the use of having people in your friend list with whom you have never even had a conversation or who will never come out to help you when you are really in need in real life. What use is keeping such people in your list? It is like doing 'Lean Management' of social media. What is the use of keeping people who cannot add value or contribute in any way to your growth in life (Getting likes on your pics or a mere display of number of the amount of friends in your friend list is Not adding value).

In order to achieve this what I do is I open my friend list and I check how many people do I know and with how many I had a conversation with. The rest I remove from my friend list. Simple, huh? Well, not for the type of people I mentioned in the beginning. It is like quitting alcohol for an alcoholic or like quitting cigarette for a chain smoker. They experience a satisfaction due to their approval seeking behavior and that is how they validate themselves by the amount of likes they get or the increasing numbers in their friend list.

Now this piece of advice is for guys only:
So guys, you remember when your request was approved by a very cute girl and you sent her a message but she never gave any response even after seeing your message? Let me break something to you, if you ever see a girl's account (Oh yes, I have seen) what you'll find is that just like you there are hundreds of other guys who behaved just like you did. So, what to do? What I do is when I see a girl whom I don't really know to be online, I say hello. If there is no response then just move on and the next time I see her online, I again say hello. I do this 3 times in total - 3 strikes! If after that there is no reply, I simply send her an additional message telling her that I am removing her (and not in the angry, egotistical way) and I remove her. What happened was that you tried getting to know a new person but since there was no response, it was like talking to a wall. So instead of sulking over it and enabling the social media to develop that same habit of seeking approval in you (which will gradually and silently metamorph into the psyche I mentioned above) and subsequently feeling sad about it, what you did was you nipped that habit in the bud by letting the attachment for that unknown person go. So in your subconscious mind, you simply didn't gave a f**k about it. Make sense?

So, what are your thought about this? Agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments below.

The Poet

Is a poet not a poet unless he is known?
Or unless his name, upon the carcass of a tree,
Blinding, in golden letters beautifully shone?
Is he not someone, to lead with might,
and raise a din of soundless voice,
to address every whim in the world's plight?
It is said, 'The pen is mightier than the sword'
Or sometimes it may be so true,
For a humble poet writes and stays,
to his intentions, sincere and in lieu.

Masculinity and how modern feminism is ruining the Indian Society - I

Living in the urban establishments in the ancient land of India where female deities are worshiped on such a large scale, day-in day-out we come across news pertaining to sexual exploitation of women. The sexual crimes committed against women is definitely worrisome and the actual nature of these crimes absolutely disgusting. This growing concern and the number of these incidents that are happening, growing simultaneously with as we move inch-by-inch closer to modernization and this raises a very dangerous question - "Do these crimes come as a byproduct or an added drawback of modernization?". How valid is this question really? The answer as it seems is that it is not valid because the same nature of crimes are committed against women even in the rural areas, which still to this day covers a large part of the country. The point of difference between urban and rural areas is how few of these crimes are actually reported in the two areas and the difference is big! The victim seldom comes forward. 

But to this day and age, can it be confidently said that all women are victims and can never be considered as perpetrators? This is even more doubtful. Now let's see the other side of the coin. Are all the crimes reported by women as victims, true? The answer to this is the data given by Police Department of New  Delhi which says that more than 45-50% of cases are found to be fake and untrue where false claims of rape was filed by women in order to either extort money or just to teach their partners a 'lesson' which earlier was a consensual relationship. Take a look for yourselves: here

Hence it could be very well said that the law intended for the protection of women is being misused. There are several cases registered where even the men were completely innocent, and the women were clearly guilty even in the eyes of the law, still the women were given a leeway in their treatment which if it was a man, he would have been severely punished. How fair is that? And the more important question - has the soft corner for women in people's heart due to sexual crimes against women has unhinged our capability to differentiate between right from wrong? The evidence certainly points that way. And this is worrisome. Scales have to be balanced for a good society and it leaning in either direction will only lead to injustice within the society. It will suppress one gender and glorify the other. Equality goes both ways!

Immortal Talks - A Book Review

“Are you aware that you are not a body? You have a body.” chorused the elder Mahtangs.

 

Introduction:
GENRE: Spirituality
AUTHOR: Shunya
PAGES:160
YEAR OF PUBLISH: 2017 

 

Mahtangs (better known as Mathangs) are the tribal people residing in the forests of Mount Piduru in Sri Lanka. This tribe, similar to the sentinelese, choose to be cut off from modern civilization but they cannot be more different from the sentinelese. Mathangs are the followers of Lord Hanuman and descendants of Vibhishana, the brother of Ravana from The Ramayana. Apart from this, the Mathangs are said to be very spiritual and with good reason. It is said that the Mathangs are visited by Lord Hanuman in every 41 years. Quite interesting isn’t it?
All of this came to light in the year 2014 when a researcher was studying the behavior of the tribe and completely oblivious at the time as to what he was going to find! Fascinating!
Lord Hanuman is said to be among the 7 people who are said to be immortal. It is believed that every 41 years Lord Hanuman visits the tribe to teach and imbue divine knowledge to them. The Mathangs record the teaching of Lord Hanuman every 41 years in a Log book. Fortunately, the log book is now with an organization called ‘Setu Asia’which is trying to translate the book. Okay this was a short introduction to who the Mahtangs (or Mathangs) really are. Now let’s jump on to the book.

 

Summary:

 

The book begins with Hanudas, a devotee of Lord Hanuman, who along with 2 other devotees is following some tribal people in order to observe and try to establish communication with them. Hanudas used to live an elite lifestyle with his family in Toronto and was neither religious nor spiritual. His wife dies in a car accident and later he loses his only son to drugs and paranoid schizophrenia. This leaves him to be completely hollow – ‘like a hoop which lets things pass through it. No sorrow. No pain. No regret.’ It was then that he encounters an unusual scene. He leaves for India and comes in contact with a Guru who gives him the name ‘Hanudas’ and explains to him that it was not a hallucination indeed. Gurudev explains it was because only pure souls can experience that. He explains that Hanudas encountered such a scene because after his son’s funeral his mind was absolutely blank, completely free and detached from everything the external world has to offer – 
‘Your soul, like the majority of humans of this era, is asleep. Your soul awoke for a brief period of time on the day you buried your son’
After that moment he experiences a divine epiphany and leaves to wander – in search of nothing – in a pursuit to awaken his soul. He eventually feels that he has reached his destination when he comes across this tribe known as ‘Mahtangs’. He along with 2 more sages tries to approach the tribe but are rebuked by the leader and hence finds himself following and observing the tribe. Very soon her deciphered the meaning of the set of seven symbols he had collected from the Mahtangs. It translated as follows: ‘The immortal Lord Hanuman comes every 41 years to impart supreme knowledge to his disciples, the Mahtangs’. Over the course of next several months, he collected thousands of such symbols, or the puzzles wherin lay enshrined the entire knowledge Lord Hanuman imparted to his disciples.
He, with the help of other sages, deciphered these puzzles and documents them. These finding are henceforth explained in the form of different chapters in this book.

 

My Review:

 

The religion – Hinduism (it actually is Sanatan Dharma) – is the oldest religion that exists today. It is the only religion in which even if you are an atheist, you are still a Hindu. It is the choice of the seeker whichever and whatever form of god he/she wants to embrace. Even the belief that he/she does not believe in god is a form of belief and hence that person is still a Hindu. It is a religion which is based on the practice of looking for the absolute truth which involves science more than anything. I will not be exaggerating when I confidently claim that all the things that modern science is discovering now has already been mentioned in the Vedas and Upanishads many thousands of years ago. It is more of Spirituality than a ‘Religion’ in the truest sense and is far different from what is perceived by the masses. It is a way of Life. And this is clearly evident by the contents of this book.
The book is written in a very simplistic manner which enables the reader to understand even the most complex workings of the truth of what the soul is, what is life, the movement of the soul from one body to another, the life and death cycle, the Karma-Desire, etc. If I have to describe my experience of reading this book in one word, I will choose – enlightening. The way in which everything was explained is very simple and effective. The reader is able to imagine every scene as if it is happening right before their eyes. The way in which everything is explained is extraordinarily simple, effective and quite enjoyable at the same time. The prologue of the book describes how Hanudas comes to find all the symbols and puzzles and the rest of the book in chapters and in the form of stories of the same tribe explains the subtleties of the extraordinary way in which the universe works, who we are and how to get out of this endless cycle of birth and death in Maya. 
Those of you do not know, Maya is everything you experience. It is everything that you sense i.e., see, feel, hear, taste, touch. Maya is said to be an illusion. It is the physical world which follows the rules of space-time and the human soul which is stuck in this Maya thinking that it is the only reality experiences endless cycle of birth and death. The purpose of the human soul is to break this cycle and attain Moksha viz., unification with the absolute – the Bramh.
The book along with this also explains what the soul really is. How it goes from one body to another and what it experiences when it is out of a body. Not only this, the book also explains the type of souls there are, what are the characteristics of the soul which resides in birds, animals and humans. The struggle between the soul to be free from the shackles of birth and death and the limitations posed by the human body which understands this world to be the only reality and the Karma-Desire scale of balance is beautifully explained in one of the chapters titled ‘The Mermaid’ in the form of a story.

 

I definitely enjoyed reading this book. I’d say that it must be read at least once in the lifetime irrespective of which religion, caste or sex you belong to. Read this with an open mind because as the Vedas says, there is only one absolute truth rest everything is different realities varying from person to person.

I Am Not Alone

via I Am Not Alone

This might sound strange, coming from someone who spends a lot of time alone, writing, and maybe this is the inescapable truth about writers: we spend a lot of time alone, in quiet rooms, contemplating worlds that exist only in our heads, but I don’t feel lonely.

I am alone, but I don’t feel lonely anymore.

When I was younger I used to think that if someone would tell me that I could write a great novel, something people will still be reading a hundred years in the future, and all I had to do was live my life in obscurity, I’d accept. I thought great things require a sacrifice, and I wasn’t so sure what the most important thing about being a writer actually was.

It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized what writing was all about, and I’ve expressed this view many times here: we write because we want to reach out to others. We write with the hope that our words will mean something to someone else other than ourselves.

I am able to reach out to people, I am able to present the world my ideas and dreams and stories, and for that I am grateful. In doing this, I don’t feel alone anymore. If even a single one of my posts or stories or essays made you feel something, or made you realize something about the world we live in, then that makes me happy.

There are a couple of simple rules when it comes to writing: never stop writing, and never be afraid to share your writing with the world. It doesn’t matter how, just do it. And out of all the billion people in the world, if just one loves your writing, that’s more than enough, more than you could ever ask for.

When I decided to self-publish my stories (and write this blog) I made myself a promise: that I wouldn’t give up, no matter what. I didn’t quit when I sold three copies of my short stories during the entire month of May 2012, earning a total of $1.05 before taxes, I didn’t quit when it seemed that no one was interested in reading my blog posts, I didn’t quit when I figured out that I couldn’t possibly afford to launch an online magazine.

But at some point, sooner or later, I would have if it weren’t for the tremendous support you folks have provided. It’s you folks who kept the flame alive, who kept me fighting even when I felt like giving up. Because, believe me, we all have our moments, when we feel that the entire world is fighting back.

I’m not going to lie. Sales have been below average these past months, so I had to rely on contributions from those of you who believe in my dream.

That’s why I want to thank Elizabeth, Eduardo, and all the others for donating, for taking me closer to reaching my goal, and along with it, my dream of becoming a professional writer.

$4,600 left to raise in order to reach the goal for this year. To be fully funded, to have no other worries but to write, to produce as much work as possible, be it blog posts or fiction.

If you’d like to help me out, you can donate any amount you see fit via PayPal here.

Also, you can purchase reblogs from my e-store here.

Fun fact: I sell five reblogs a month because the amount raised is enough to pay for bills and stuff. Right, three more need to be purchased by the end of the month.

Oh, and you can also purchase an e-book bundle from my e-store here.

Whatever you decide to do, whether you support me or not, I want you to know that I wouldn’t be able to write without your help.

Once again, thank you,

Cristian Mihai