MY FRIEND BOUGHT OFF-WHITES OMG OMG OMG OMG

Have you noticed the headline brands today? Off-White? Supreme? Or Yeezys and Nike Airmax? There is high chance that you must have on Instagram because every next post is somebody wearing them and flexing the clothes and shoes. It is as if wearing them is a social status symbol and anybody who cannot afford it. It seems as if one person bought a Supreme hoodie and everybody thought it was cool and a herd formed which overdosed on the brand as if it was a drug. A few people who were waiting in a queue at a supreme shop were interviewed and were asked why they liked supreme. Most people had no answer and a lot of them did not even know which collaboration was being released that day. This just goes too how the mindlessness of the herd. If everybody buys something, just to fit in, another person will.
The main reason behind herd formation is that people are afraid of social ostracism. We fear that if we do not buy these 'hype beast' items, them we will be looked down upon by our friends who will stop talking to us. As surprising as it sounds, it is true. Due to this, we see a bunch of kids in high school wasting their parents' hard earned money on these $1700 shoes.

The problem with us millennials is that we are too absorbed by others to remember who we are. there is absolutely no space for individuality and for personal exploration. We wan to be like each other and do everything everybody does, just so that we do not get ostracised. This is probably the same reason that you see a bunch of kids in any given school who nobody really talks to because they are very different from everybody. They do not go clubbing every weekend, they do not listen to noisy rap, they read plentiful books and do not drink alcohol or smoke herb. That is more or less every millennial in a nutshell. I salute those kids for being different and true to themselves
This leads me to ask: what are we missing?
The most important thing we miss is personal exploration. By this, I mean understanding oneself, one's strengths and weaknesses and how one can do well in life. Most people nowadays hesitate at what they will do in the future or who their idol is or what their favourite book is. Reading has no value anymore and those few who do read, read garbage. I mean no offence, but every teenage fiction is a recycled version of another novel. The essence of literature has truly lost its touch.

The only way to survive and be anything in life is to try to be different. this may seem easier said than done but it is essential. You'd could start this in small ways which will soon ingrain a certain mindset into you.
1) STOP BUYING GARBAGE.
2) Do not just do something because everybody is doing it because

If fifty million people do something wrong, it is still something wrong.

3) Try being different in everyday living too. Try dressing different, talking different, or even listening to different music

in conclusion, being different is very important today but is never spoken of. Everybody is a sheep and the herd is led by a foolish shepherd towards a wolf. A wolf here is the end of the world.
So, instead of wasting $10,000 on a pair of Human Races, you'd rather buy your mumma a cute purse or a yourself a new book

 

TOO LESS>TOO MUCH

Consider these two presumptions:

A man who owns one penny is poor.

A man who owns one penny more than a poor man is also poor.

And consider this conclusion: 

A man who owns a trillion pennies is poor.

Does this conclusion make sense? 

Logically, it does not make any sense. Any man who owns a trillion pennies is very very rich. But, if you were to see the situation considering the two presumptions and with a mathematical mind, you will realise that the conclusion makes sense. A poor man is a man who also owns one more penny than the first. A man who has one more than the second poor man is also poor. A man who owns one more penny than the third poor man is also poor, and so on...

In this view, a man with any amount of pennies is poor. 

But this does not make any sense! If I have a trillion pennies, I'm very rich! But I'm also not!

This situation is called a paradox 

A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement which when researched actually proves to be true?

A paradox can also be a contradiction in the general belief and a proven statement. For example, 2+2/2 is two but if you were to use BODMAS, then the answer will come to three. 

another very famous example is the paradox off choice.

we are often led to believe that the more options you have, the better your choice can be. Your career counsellor tells you to keep maximum options available while choosing a college. You prefer a plethora of mobile phones when buying a new phone. But what if I told you that your choice would be better if there would be 5 phones to choose from than 50?

This is true.

Lets say a shoe shop sells 500 pairs of shoes.You walk in and decide to buy one pair and begin choosing. You over over a few shoes among the sea of shoes on display. Most of the times, you will get confused and walk out of the shop empty handed. Have you ever been in such a situation?

Selection is the yardstick to progress and it is what differentiates us from planned economies and the Stone Age. But there is a limit of choices and when the limit is surpassed, the surfeit can often destroy the quality of life. 

A large number of choices ruin our decision making and make us choose an option which is not the best. This gets worse when the best option is actually hidden among a number of bad options. This was the case in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the villain was elated by the best decorated chalice and drank from it. There were a hundred chalices and the holy grail was hidden in the back. Had there been only ten, the chances of one finding the grail would have been better. Maybe not for the villain, but any other rational person. 

Think about what you want before making a choice. Inspect all the choices and preferably write your aim down. Never choose with the idea of choosing the best choice. There is no such choice as a perfect choice or best choice. Set your mind to settle for the good choice. Yes, even in the case of partners. Only the best will do? In this world of unlimited choices, a good choice is the new sexy.

Why a free meal is a SCAM

Have you ever been given a chocolate or a pen for free by a shopkeeper or a friend or a free dish at a restaurant? If yes, then chances are tat you must have immediately formed a soft spot for the other party and in a while did something for them like visited them again or bought a pen from them.
This is called reciprocity. Reciprocity essentially means that if somebody does something for you, you are inclined to do something for them in return, by conscience. It is more or less a favour for a favour.
Here's another example: a person offers to help you with your homework and you gladly agree. a few weeks later, he asks you for your research on the upcoming project which is not supposed to be shared. Chances are that you will, even unwillingly, share your information with that person. this is because you brain will sting up the memory of the person helping you in a time of need. SO, you helping him does not seem so much.

Reciprocity may seem like no big deal, but in the world, it can have a lot of consequences.
A small example is the Hare Krishna Society. Members of the Hare Krishna Society (HKS from now) often need donations. So, they roam around crowded places like airports, railway stations, parks and city squares looking for potential donors. They carry around small flowers and whenever they see anybody, they walk up to them, greet them and then give them the flower. They tell the person that the flower is a "gift from God" and that they should keep the flower. after a few minutes of talking to the person, they pitch their donation. More than often, it pays off and the person donates to HKC.
As you can see, the member of HKC first greets the prison and gives him a flower as a gift from God and then begins to chat with him. This is the favour. The flower is the gift given which triggers your conscience and makes you sympathetic to the HKC member. The member then talks to you for a while to embed the feeling of reciprocating the gift in you. Lastly, he asks you for a donation and your embedded conscience stirs and you remember his gift to you. Even, it may seem like a small gift which he gave you, it is still enough to donate a substantial amount of money to the HKC.

We are never able to judge the value a gift or a favour which leads us to reciprocate a larger amount. Here, the HKC member is wise and gave you something of a small monetary value but a large emotional value which in turn made you want to give him something of higher monetary value than something with a high emotional value because you don't really carry family heirlooms to give out at a railway station. The HKC member played his cards perfectly while your deck fell out of your hands.

The world is full of people like the HKC members. The best way to help yourself is to realise when your conscience acts up. From there you have to be able to differentiate it with emotion and your current position. Not returning a favour is fine. it is called "favour" for a reason.
So, if anybody does decide to give you a free meal or a drink, its best to avoid it, or even better, take it and run away.

If somebody points a gun at you, run towards it

Imagine this: You're an American agent in a German standoff in a shady back alley of Darmstadt. A German soldier is pointing a gun at you and your frozen still looking at him. Your gun is on the floor. What can you do? You can run away, but that will have the obvious result in him pulling the trigger. You can also surrender but it would lead only to the electric chair. It seems that you're in a fix. There has to be a third option but everything seems to lead to death. Without thinking you run towards the soldier.
One of three things can happen- He shoots you in the shoulder, he misses his shot or he just does not shoot. You have opened two more options for yourself.
But why should you care about this? You are probably reading this on your mobile at home, lazing on a sofa.
The importance of this anecdote is how it can apply to our lives. Often we find ourselves in situations where we are helpless and are at our wit's end. We consider our two options of doing something and choose the one which an have the least consequences. However, there is always a third option. It is never thought of and often very very risky, but fruit it bears is very worth taking it.

Why can't we see the third option?
The biggest emotion barring our finding the third option is fear. We are afraid of consequences and often tend to avoid to squelch the idea of succumbing to our fear. Often, we are put in situations which are very time bound and the risk of going wrong is very high and the consequence is severe. Our fear, in these situations, increases exponentially and we panic.
The best way to deal with this is to take a break for a minute and take a breather. Take a washroom break and wash your face. It will clear your mind.
If the teacher is coming around to check your homework, and you have done only half of it, you are stuck with either showing it or not showing it. In this case, your mind goes into hyper speed and you try thinking of solutions. But it doesn't work like that. our mind is not a warp tunnel and it cannot function super fast very efficiently.
A friend of mine was stuck in this situation and he considered his options- Owe up and take the incomplete sign or complain that he didn't know how to do a sum. Instead, he sae a third option and swiftly turned his pages to a few uncorrected practice sums. The type of sums were the same as those of the homework. The teacher came, saw it and went. I got an incomplete for not completing a graph but he walked away scot free.

Another excellent way of finding a third option is to eliminate your other two options. Burning your bridges is very helpful, but again very dangerous.
General Xiang Yu sent his army across the Yangtze River to take on the Qin dynasty, in the third century B.C. However, his troops were not very confident and he had two options- Inevitably lose because of a army with a weak morale or call off the invasion. Instead, he decided something unexpected. While his troops slept, he ordered some to set all the ships on fire. The next day he told them that they had two options- win or die trying. By removing his first two options and forcing himself to think, he came to this conclusion. He won the battle.

In conclusion, a third option is a godsend but only believers can see it. You have to want to find a third option to actually see it. If you stay in the lane and go with the usual two options, you won't get anywhere. So go ahead and try your hand at the third option. So what if you get shot? It's better dying a hero than at the laughter of a bunch of Germans.

Can Aanjaneya be a black Japanese boy?

An adventurist father named his two twin sons Winner and Loser Lane. They both were raised together, went to the same school, took the same subjects, attended the same tuition and did more or less everything similar.

Loser Lane succeeded in life. He went to Lafayette college in Pennsylvania and joined the police department. He never hid his name but it was often very uncomfortable for others to call him "Loser". They used nicknames like "Lou" or "Losier" or sometimes just gave him a different name. 

As for his brother Winner, became a criminal with a very long record: nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest and arson.

This example shows that naming your child does not matter on what he or she ends up becoming. We make our own destinies and superstitious names like "Kulakesara" will not make your son famous, or even a famed pundit. 

We often associate a lot of personalities with names. fFor example, we often associate Arjun to be an idiot's name or a common person who has nothing special. We associate Paris to be a name of a party animal. we address Charity as a stripper's name. in general, we associate names with personalities and jobs.

Worse than this, we often associate names with castes or how rich a person is.

You would normally associate a Chotu or Mukesh to a servant or a lower person, while you would address a name like Richmond or "warren" to a rich man or a top class person.

The truth is that this is just a continuous bias towards these names. just because all the Mukeshs you hear about are servants, doesn't mean that its a lowly name, as there is a billionaire after that name. 

When it comes to names, we jump to conclusions very fast. We take names to be the end all of a person's religion or race. We always assume a Ram is a Hindu or an Ali is a Muslim or John is a Christian. The truth is that a name does not define you. Ram could be a muslim if he wants and Ali could be a Buddhist, John could be a Jew and Sohinki could be a Taoist. 

A very common herd mentality is to name children after typical names. For example black people name boys DeShawn or DeBravo and girls Aliyah or Kiara.

white people name boys Cody or Anthony and girls Ashley or Jessica.

Asians name boys Yamamoto or nobita and girls Shizuka or Midori 

Spanish people name boys Juan or Javier and girls Juanita or Camilla 

These are the most common racial names and are also the lowest performing or the least successful people with these name. 

But what if these people want to change their names? what if Anthony wants to change his name to Benjamin (the most high end white boy name), or, more importantly, what if DeShawn wants to change his name to Connor (the second most popular white boy name)? 

Will this change affect who they are? now that they have new and successful names, will the thread of destiny change for them? 

The answer: NO

Anybody who bothers to change their name in the name of economic success is at least highly motivated, and motivation is probably a stronger indicator of success than, well, a name. - Steven Levitt 

At one point in the 1990s, the most famous girl's name was Nevaeh. The reason behind this girl's name was that if you were to spell it backwards, it would spell to heaven. Some superstitious parent mustve thought that if he or she would have named their child that, it would signify prosperity.

In india, their a common mentality to name your cild after gods or children of gods. That is why there are so many Ganeshs, Rams, Radhas, and Mohammeds roaming around. the truth is that several of these people commit crimes and "taint their God's name". All of this is baloney and a pretence to blame people for something that does not affect them.
It doesn't matter what your name is, you can be a Mohandas and commit crimes and be a Dawood and be a philanthropist

BRIBERY FOR DUMMIES

Have you ever slipped some cash under the table or called for a quick fix for your problem?
The world is a dark place and around a trillion dollars are exchanged in bribes every year and India alone suffered a loss of 364 billion rupees in a year due to 2G scams, the commonwealth games and mining.
However, on a personal level, have YOU ever bribed anybody? Personally, I have never had the opportunity and this leads me to ask- "How do you bribe somebody?"

Step 1: Learn about who you are bribing 
Understanding your target is an important factor in bribing somebody. You do not want to end up in a position where you offer the target some money and he says no. What will you do then? It will be awkward as hell! What if he calls the police?
So, you must know the person in and out and find out if he is susceptible to the dark arts and has ever committed the offence before. Also find out how much he normally would take for a bribe and how much power and authority he has. For example, if he is a teacher, he really cannot help you become the head boy  of the school or admit you back into school for higher studies if you have failed or misbehaved gravely in the past. That is the job of the principal, who probably is not as easy as the teacher and will often expect a greater "donation to the school."
One key thing to remember is that EVERYBODY IS CORRUPTIBLE. Everybody can be bribed and even the so called "un-corruptible" are very susceptible to bribes.
In fact, Red Sea Scandal had over 50 "un-corruptible" government employees.

Step 2: Work up on you approach 
There are two ways to approach a person for a bribe, clothing wise. If the person is a high authority, like the principal, then dress up formally, but if the target is a clerk or a lower member of the corporate hierarchy, then you can dress up semi formally. Never walk up to bribe somebody in sweatpants.
You have to be able to play on your words while approaching your target. You cannot be blunt and tell the target that you are offering a bribe or a large sum of money in exchange of something. A universally accepted phrase is "I'm sure we can work something out." In india, it is much easier to bribe somebody: you can mention the code word for a bribe- "Chai pani" and the target, if used to the ways of the dark arts, will understand and comply.
Sometimes, if you are lucky, you may not even have to approach the target and can make a generous "donation" in the name of the target or organisation. Such is the case in schools and non profits

Step 3: Do not act desperate
An important part of the deal is your posture an the way you behave. You must behave in a calm and chilled out manner. You must not portray yourself to be desperate because then you leave openings for the target to exploit you or sweeten the pot for him. do not directly jump into the deal. Start talking about something you know he likes and slowly change the topic to the deal. Begin your negotiable terms at a low value so that you can feel the target out and know how much he may actually want. This may help you save some money for a bribe for another day. If you start high, then you might reach the limit of what you can afford and he may demand more.

Step 4: Try not to get rejected
The last thing you want is to get rejected for the bribe.
Have you ever thought what happens immediately after your target says no? You look at him and he looks back at you in an awkward tension and nobody talks. He will call security and report you. If he has recording cameras in his room, you may get locked up and your days in bribing and even business will be over, unless you can, of course, bribe the judge.
So try not to get rejected.

Bribery is terrible and bribing anybody is not recommended at all. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. So, if you do have to bribe somebody, then it is best you keep low and do it. Inversely you could also be the target for somebody. In this case, you should ideally carry out the deal, but if you feel extra pesky, you can always accept the cash and not carry out the deal. The briber can in no way complain to the authorities. What will he say? "He took my bribe money and didn't carry out his end!" Most bribes are given in the form of gifts and hence you won't have to even pay taxes, so all your money will remain clean. But be careful! Know who you are dealing with because if you do that to a gangster, you will literally get waterboarded in a back room, or worse, get your brains blown out.

Things beyond control

Studying and wishing your fake ID works, running and hoping McDonald's new burger is tasty, going advice and hoping your friend follows your advice. 

These are opposites with the main idea of things we can control and things we cannot control.

Things that we cannot control outnumber the number of things we can control by an exponential amount and reasonably, we spend considerable more time on those things. It is completely normal and acceptable. Just because everybody does it but that does not mean that it is correct to spend time on the things that you cannot control.

One of the biggest things we cannot control is 'worry'. Worrying about something will not change how it will happen. Worrying if your exam will be difficult won't make it difficult or easy but you will be wasting a lot of time worrying which could be used to study. In the realm of worry, time goes slowly but while you are lost in it, time, in reality, flows fast. It is as if every minute spent worrying is two minutes actually spent. 

Worrying is a problem which only you face. this means that you worrying will not affect others. for example, if you worry that your friend will do better than you in exam, the anxiety only affects you and your friend is not afflicted by the worry, lest he even knows it is happening. Your time is being wasted. While worrying, the mind becomes weak and often brings in the worst possible situations. 

we cannot control what fortune holds out for us but we can work now and now worry to make out future better. Worrying will never take us anywhere.

Another important thing which we cannot control is the 'what if'. While studying or working, our mind often wanders and we pop up hypothetical situations on the most meaningless and baseless things. For example, if you keep thinking different scenarios of asking a celebrity out in your mind, or the probable things you would do on mars, you're wasting your time. This is rarely a possibility and time should be spent on better things.

We are fighting an unwindable battle with things we cannot control. We must learn to recognise the things we can control and cannot control and phase out the uncontrollable things. This will be good for us as we will save time and our brains.