The fear-belief model.

Hell, bad karma, reincarnation as an undesirable specie,.....repercussions. Every belief system has it. Is a punishment mechanism an essential ingredient of the belief recipe, without which there will be no faith?

It can be argued that the answer to the question is 'yes.' This answer can be supported by examining the age old advice, "spare the rod, spoil the child." The advice is not to be taken literally. If applied correctly, the rod will be spared and the child won't be spoiled. Also notice, that the advice is not, "save the candies, spoil the child." The main idea behind the advice is to introduce fear to make the child a believer of good behavior, work ethics, manners, etc. Fear does appear to have a relationship with belief. Greater the fear, easier it is to make a believer.

On gender roles and double standard.

Why is it that society gives boys all the freedom they can handle and judges girls with a completely different set of rules?

Well, the two genders played very different roles in a traditional community. It is possible that the double standard in gender emerged as a solution to a problem facing a community. What could this problem be and why was double standard a viable solution?

The Problem:
Boys being boys, girls being girls, boys and girls being together, the result under unsupervised conditions may not always be favorable to the well being of the community. As in, children being born to parents who are children themselves is not healthy.

The Solution: Double Standard
Lets take a farming community where child pregnancy is a big issue. The community, not being rich, is desperate for a solution. A town hall meeting is called to discuss the matter. After hours of discussion the community believes that they have found a viable solution: The Double Standard.

The Double Standard works in the following way. Teach the girls acceptable behavior, make them in charge of enforcing it, and establish reward and punishment mechanism to keep the girls in check. The choice of teaching the girls and not the boys is important because girls spend most of their time helping the mother in the kitchen. This provides the mother ample opportunity to teach the girls responsible behavior and how it needs to be enforced. The boys in the community usually spend time working on the farm, therefore teaching them is not really an option. When boys and girls do meet, the girls are well trained by their mothers to enforce rules society aspects them to live by. As a reward, girls doing a good job are respected, doors are held open for them, chair pulled out. They are referred to as ladies, men mind their language in their presence, and raise their hats in salutations. When a certain girl is not doing a good job, she is labeled as a slut, not respected in society, and not considered to be marriage material. Boys are exempt from this reward/punishment mechanism since they do not bare the responsibility of enforcing any social rules.

The undoing of the double standard
Girls to a certain extent still enjoy the benefits from the double standard time. For example, doors held open, chairs pulled out, men restraining from obscenities, etc. However, the reason is mostly forgotten. The double standard system is looked upon as unfair to girls and a thing of the past.

Information age?

We are living in the 'Information Age.' What is 'information age' anyway? What age were we living in before? and what is next?

Seems as if the world has many ages: stone age, bronze age, information age, etc. When 'stone age' is mentioned, one tends to think of a period when humans widely used stones as weapons, tools, etc. Similar to stone age, bronze age is when humans developed the capacity to work with and make use of metals. Following this line of though, information age would be the time period when humans developed the capacity to make use of information? Well and good, just one problem: information is not an object. Information has always been important. In the stone age information regarding good hunting grounds, pastures, water supplies, must be very valuable. In a sense, the stone age people were living in the information age as well since they relied heavily on information just like us. Then why is it that we get to live in the 'information age' and not the stone man.

How about we take a different perspective. A perspective where communities of humans competing for domination are at the center. In this perspective stone age means that the group of humans who championed the use of stones dominate all other groups. Communities living on stone rich lands are more prosperous compared to others and knowledge regarding stones is highly coveted. The advent of bronze age causes a shift of power from the stone people to the metal people. Now the communities who championed metalwork dominate humanity.

Viewing from this perspective, being in the information age suggests that the group of humans with better information is likely to dominate all the rest. Stone and metal are still important, but also plentiful. Information is the key to domination. Here are two examples.

Television Ads. Yesterday, there use to be a black and white television with one and only channel. If you were interested in selling a kids product, you could easily buy the advertisement spot during the cartoons and get the attention of your target audience. Today, with over hundred channels, information regarding who is watching what and when is important to best place a television ad.

Airbus vs Boeing. Recently Airbus reveled its latest airliner the A380, while Boeing is aggressively marketing its latest airliner the 7E7. Both airliners are very different, the A380 being the largest in the world and 7E7 being mid-sized and fuel efficient. The sole reason for this difference is information. Airbus based its design on information which suggested that the future of air travel will require a huge airliner to transport very large number of passengers between major world airports. Boeing based its design on information which suggested that the future of air travel will require a mid-size fuel efficient airliner to transport a moderate number of passengers between small airports. The aircraft manufacturer with the correct information will dominate the other.

So what is next? We cannot really tell. The world could go back to the materials age(stone, metal, etc), for example, the group of people possessing Uranium or Plutonium will dominate the world? Or, it can be something new, like the Energy age, where the group best able to harness and manipulate energy will be on the top. If information becomes commonplace it may lead to the knowledge age, where information in conjunction with know how will dictate who is on top. Communication age or transportation and logistics age are sounding good too.

Emotions and their purpose

Why do we have emotions? What purpose is served by being angry, jealous, or scared? Lets take some emotions and examine their purpose.

Anger
Much of our social conduct is taught to us by society. This teaching mainly consist of rules that make sure that we are within the social norms. Sometimes we find ourselves at odds with the society. For example, if someone breaks some rule of society and takes unfair advantage and consequently makes one angry. The emotion of anger serves the purpose of undoing the teaching of society and takes one back to primitive instincts that are tried and test for many many years. Unfortunately downgrading to primitive instincts does not always work for the better.

Jealousy
Resources are always limited. As in, there are only so many cute girls around. If you happen to be a boy friend of a desirable girl, it is likely that you are well acquainted with this emotion. If you know of a desirable girl and you are not on her list, it is still likely that you are well acquainted with this emotion. Simply put, jealousy makes sure that we protect and pursue our interests.

Fear
This emotion prevents us from casually walking into situation or performing acts that are potentially harmful. It develops with time and is enforced my our mistakes. In the absence of fear, we will have to consciously evaluate all threats in our environment and actively remember what is not good for us. The unfortunate side of fear is that sometimes it causes false alarms. People are afraid of heights or enclosed spaces for no good reason. Similar to anger, fear does not always succeed in achieving its objective.

Guilt
Humans are social beings who tend to form rules with which the whole society can benefit. Often it is possible for an individual to break a rule or two and gain an unfair advantage. Guilt may not be able to prevent one from breaking a rule, it does however attempt to keep it under control. The guilty party may reveal the truth and face consequence or feel bad about doing it again.

Love
Probably the most talked about, written about, emotion which remains the least understood. Simply put, love keeps the human specie breeding and from abandoning our children. In many cases love is not enough. The difficulties of keeping the parents together is well know. Similar to other emotions, love has its problems, but so far, it has done a good job of keeping humans from being extinct by lack of breeding.

Stupidity in numbers?

If many individually intelligent people are put together to perform a task, do they make an entity of lesser intelligence?

Lets examine three examples: Albert Einstein, landing on the moon and world hunger.

Albert Einstein solved one of the mysteries of the universe, a very admirable achievement by a single human being. Landing on the moon is probably one of the greatest technological accomplishments of humanity in recent history. A task involving a very large number of people (and a few chimps) working towards one seemingly impossible, never been done before, goal. World hunger by comparison seems trivial. It is an unpleasant reminder that today with limitless technology and endless riches, world hunger remains a haunting problem. There are probably many more people working towards ending world hunger compared to people who worked on reaching the moon.

Here are our three examples. First, Albert Einstein, one person solving one of the mysteries of the universe. Second, landing on the moon, a moderately large group of people succeeding in a technological challenge. Third, world hunger, a very large group of people failing in an apparently simple logistical task.

The question is: if Einstein was not working alone, would he have failed? If the number of people involved in reaching the moon was much larger, would there be a greater chance of failure? If the number of people working on world hunger is reduce, is there a greater chance of success? Is there stupidity in numbers?

Does human intelligence have limits?

in·tel·li·gence the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations :REASON; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)

... at least according to Merrian-Webster Dictionary. What this definitions fails to tell us is, whether intelligence is a noun or a verb. Can a smart person not use his/her intelligence and become the village idiot. Or, can a below-average student solve the next big problem in Physics and join the club with Einstein. Is intelligence a noun or a verb?

Is intelligence transferable? Could Newton write a play or Sheakespear invent Calculus? Do intelligent people excel in all aspects of life, or just in those premitted by the intelligence they possess.

Does human intelligence have limits? Intelligence maybe one of the least understood human attributes with many unanswered questions surrounding it. The one question of intrest is, does intelligence have limits? There is good reason for investing time and effort in seeking the answer to this question as it may bring light to many other issues. For example, do humans possess enough intelligence to live together in peace? Can humans end world hunger? Will humans bring an end do disesase? Solve global warming?

Are we smarter than this, or has the limit been reached?