Why we behave the way we behave

"1984 is so popular because it's trivial and it attacks our enemies. If (George) Orwell had dealt with a different problem-- ourselves--his book wouldn't have been so popular. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published" - Noam Chomsky 

Noam chomsky was talking about 1984, George Orwell's classic novel that depicted a fictional dystopian system in future (1984 was future when George Orwell wrote that Novel) where people are always wary of 'Big Brother watching' from everywhere. It was a story of clear good vs bad, us vs them that fits well with our simplified mental model where problem is always 'out there'. But if at all, speed of information flow has changed drastically from Orwell's time. Pervasive connectivity and information sharing of 21st century, among many other things, also are bringing many facets of our existence close to each other, [somewhat like a cubist painting]  forcing us, sometimes, to look at the problems as extensions of our own being.

Consider, for example, the following cases:

• Krishnan is a young software programmer and is regarded by his friends as one with high analytical skill. Krishnan got very offended when he was prodded by one of his colleagues to try a non-vegetarian dish.  "I am a brahmin!" He told his friend, in a tone of stern rebuke. His friend was surprised with the reaction for he thought food habit is one's personal choice and should not have anything to do with one's cast/community identity. However, Krishnan with his high analytical faculty could not see for himself that he is correlating two unrelated aspects of his life. 
•  Pavan, an NRI, came to India to marry his long-time girl-friend. Otherwise quite liberal minded, and an advocate of gender equality, he did not see anything wrong in his family's expectation that all expenses of marriage must be borne by his fiancee's family. 
• Mrinalini is a retired college professor and is a mother of a son and a daughter. Although quite progressive in her views she is steadfast that her son should not be asked to enter kitchen nor he should be asked to serve his food by himself. Those jobs are either for her or for her daughter. She cannot see that this viewpoint of hers is starkly inconsistent to her otherwise progressive outlook.
• Many otherwise reasonable and educated people were shown in many news channel who wholeheartedly believed in and prepared themselves for doomsday prediction imminent on 21.12.12 although NASA and other scientists have been diligently explaining in various media that all predictions are unscientific and unsubstantiated.
• In the context of attitudes towards rape,an  Open magazine article tells us that, "for victims above 12, their(victims') behaviour comes under scrutiny. There is always a suspicion that this girl must have done something that led to it. Since anyone below 16 isn’t old enough to give consent, the defence is always trying to prove the girl to be above 16. When it comes to victims in the 16 to 18 age group, “the court almost never believes it was rape”.

I guess I needn't tell that all names above are fictitious which only means that names do not bring any additional import to the situations they describe.  The cases are not about the person as much as about the inconsistencies that they portray. When we look at those incidences together, the import and irony of Mr. Chomsky's comment are unmissable: We are pretty good at objectively analyzing an event when it is far removed from our own everyday behaviour and experience. But we are poorly equipped to see the inconsistencies, for what it is worth, in our personal viewpoints and therefore behaviours.
Many would argue that it is simply due to the fact that our belief-system is not amenable to rational analysis and our behaviours stem from long-held views and beliefs that became part of our identity as we grew up, quite unconscious of the very process. In other words, our behaviours, views and their inconsistencies are in essence, an expression of our self-inconsistent identities. An identity is self-inconsistent because certain aspect of  the identity is inconsistent with some other aspect of it and different situations evoke different aspect of the identity and therefore if one were to find rational correlation among all the viewpoints, one is bound to fail miserably.
That brings forth two questions:
1. Is Identity a solid unchangeable entity?
2. How does the Identity form?
There are many scholarly article written by eminent psychologists that tell us that identity is quite malleable and plastic as opposed to what is commonly believed. Sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously we pick and drop elements of identity to adapt to our environment. For example, we pick up food habits, outdoor and indoor activities based on what majority stakeholders in our available social circles, like. One interesting observation that some of my friends made is relevant. It seems that many american-resident Indians adopt an US persona when they travel to India but act from the Indian persona when they are in US.

Self portrait by Salvador Dali

It appears that one's identity has few layers, the core of one's being mostly remain unchanged through various experiences but upper layer keeps continuously expanded, compressed based on psychological effects from those experiences. The core of our being determines our attitude to our basic needs of life, how we relate to others, what we look for in our lives. It also defines our primal fears and our perspective about God. This core Identity shapes up mostly when we grow up as children. Essentially emotional in nature, the formation continues till teen-age and remains very much unchangeable afterwards unless one goes though certain experiences that shakes up the very basis of one's existence. This core Identity is shaped by behaviour and beliefs of our parents and our immediate family, our teachers, our social structure and the emotional experiences that we undergo as children. We learn mostly when the parents and teachers are not trying to teach us. As a child one's critical reasoning faculty is under development and trust becomes his/her encompassing filter for information. Any information that comes from that trust circle is very likely to be taken as testimony [ref] unless that information challenges existing world-view in which case the world-view will be adjusted suitably. However it is very rare that core content of this identity change drastically after one grows up. In other words through this continuous and very active process of psychological dialectics we build up a lens, quite early in our life, which pretty much defines our beliefs, our values, our moral fabric, the way we see ourselves vis-a-vis others when we grow up. Eventually that lens defines one's identity, becomes the windshields through which one sees the world and the reflection of her along her journey of life. One therefore can understand why we are unable to look at our own inconsistencies objectively, even if that inconsistency is very apparent.    Perhaps we can make an attempt to be aware of those inconsistencies and since childhood is the most important and therefore most vulnerable time for every person, as the parents of our children, if we are more conscious of our own limits of rationality and our beliefs, we probably would help them to develop to better grown-ups, little more consistent than we have been, little more rational in their outlook and behaviour, more objectively aware of their selves in respect to the rest of humanity and universe.
That appears to be the best gift a parent can give to his/her child. Life for them would then be not a fearful and isolated sojourn of survival of selves but a ceaseless opportunity to learn about the wonders and elegant laws of nature, which we are intricately and inextricably part of, as a single undivided whole.

21.12.12, Mayan Long count Calendar and collective fascination to Doomsday

My friend's ten-year-old son was not his usual self; he was not talking, asking questions or showing any interest in chocolate bar. He, his father told, could not sleep last few days because he is very afraid. "Why?", I asked. He said, his son has been reading all stories of global warming and doomsday prediction and is very worried now about future in general. I was almost choked in my attempt to restrain my sudden urge to laugh. Kids, I know from experience, take it as personal insult when adults do not take them seriously. Only if they knew that adults become adults only when they learn not to take all that is said and professed with utmost seriousness! Fact is our daily newspapers in desperation of making everything in print newsworthy, put colours in order to catch readers' attention. Often that makes a docile information like certain end of counting cycle, an ominous prediction! Mayan long count calendar ends their longest cycle on a day which incidentally happens to be 21st December, 2012 in Gregorian calendar (there are different opinions on the accuracy of the date). As such this snippet of information is simply an archeological artifact. A curious mind could find interest in how they calculated and why they started on the day that makes the end day of the day coincide with winter solstice but nothing can catch everyday-person's imagination unless it can be translated to something ominous, some startling prediction, that aligns with his innate fear. Evolution has made our emotion particularly biased towards fear. Fear has been one strong guiding emotion that helped us, the human species, to survive against ruthlessness of nature but in the 21st century, when our everyday existence is less connected to natural cycle, fear has been out of job and has become a tool in the hand of institutional PR machines, Religious zealots and attention hunting media. Doomsday prediction is one easy way of grabbing attention, albeit an innocuous, harmless one. Unless someone becomes possessed by his fear [I am not making any connection to Connecticut shooting as yet] there is very low probability of any physical or psychological harm to anyone from this type of prediction. So I told him, only the stupid believes such kind of extreme prediction and being afraid of such stuff where one cannot do much is not a very intelligent behaviour. For a kid, it is embarrassing to feel afraid but not as much as to live with a stigma of being considered unintelligent. So that worked and next time when we met he ensured that I am updated that he is not afraid any more!

Mayan Calendar: photo of stone artifact,
courtesy: http://blog.needsupply.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/mayan_calendar1.jpg

For those who are curious to know more about Mayan calendar, this  wiki page provides a good synopsis. It seems that Mayans may have understood the precession of equinox, but perhaps not as precisely as we know today. It is highly unlikely though that they understood the basic science behind it or actually made any connection to it [Science as we know, did not have any explanation before Newton]. Far less probable that they could connect it to galactical alignment [Solar system appear to be crossing the equator-equivalent of milky-way galaxy for last few years, although many object to use of the concept of equator in the context of galaxy]  as many doomsday predictors have alluded to.
But all these illustrate an interesting aspect of human thought process. Psychologists tell us that human mind as such is not adept to comprehend statistical patterns and more often it replaces that searching process with causal analysis by drawing line with only two dots, sometimes even approximating the second dot. More startling the conclusion is, more it is capable of invoking innate belief system where the answer is made readily available. In its bias towards definite actionable knowledge, the mind often makes mistake of substituting with belief for missing facts, succumbing to known fear instead of diligent fact-finding, choosing to panic without being conscious of the choice. It requires lot more emotional awareness to be not swayed by meaningless sensationalism and active opinion campaigning process, prevalent in digital media.
On a more factual but less dramatic note, scientists made a prediction in june this year that, a giant gas cloud is on a collision course with the black hole in the center of our milky-way galaxy, and the two will be close enough by mid-2013 to provide a unique opportunity to observe how the super massive black hole named Sagittarius A* [mass equivalent to mass of 4 million suns] sucks in material, in real time.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/95982/gas-cloud-will-collide-with-our-galaxys-black-hole-in-2013/

And here is one recent photo that NASA published that shows the location of the super massive black hole at the centre by capturing X-ray burst which likely to have happened due to a large mass of gas that got sucked by the black hole Sgr A*

However this event is very unlikely to impact us, the earthlings, at least for now.