A (Not Quite) Small Story

-All living things die.

-Survival is the modus operandi of life.

-Living beings are “programmed” to perform many things in order to survive.

The three affirmatives above are three solid truths. The kind of statement we don't ponder about its veracity. With the evolution of life, species were subject to risks and rewards which determined their remaining biological time. Throughout time and experience, many of those “programmed” acts of survival were put to test, abandoned or taught, regarding their efficiency on the matter of life's main code, and thus defining one as “fit”(Survival of the...) .

When the Homo sapiens sapiens appeared, the models came in with several fantastic tools derived from its ancestors, like the opposable thumb and a very virtuosistic bipedalism. But, the single most amazing feature of the Homo genus current extant species was:

The ability of asking “Why?”.

?

This, made every shard of history and culture and human life as we know possible. This innocent question is the proof of the evolution of our neural motherboards. This small line of code, which can be used for fueling great problem-solving, perceiving humongous aspects of life and even occasional pestering (notably used by youngsters), is what makes us the current most evolved species on Earth.

By being the pinnacle of evolution on our planet, survival now is easier to achieve, even being frail lifeforms compared to other beings. Which makes us essentially successful nerds of the ecosystem school. “Running for our lives” is now a code line seldom used by humans, because our cranial computers figured out ways of dealing with the bigger bullies, who can kill and eat us easily. How? By asking “Why?”, of course!

So, being on this position, where only some ailments and ourselves (the disgruntled ones) are the biggest threat of human life in general, we became quite relaxed, sitting amidst concrete forests, watching technology and quality of life evolve and effectively enhancing our survival chances and lifetime. All of that while complaining and hashtagging the shit out of everything...

Suddenly, that amazing small question didn't provide anymore willpower to those who asked it. Slowly, it became the base of human lamentation. More and more people were driven to grieve and less and less people were hungry for knowing. (Why?)

Which (finally) brings us to my point.

.

Today, humans are forgetting to ask “Why?”. Not in the lamenting way, which we can see and read extensively on any social media, but truly asking in search of simple or complex answers, or even more questions. The whole point of what I am writing here is that this lack of questioning is even bigger regarding ourselves individually. We are living in several turmoils of different magnitudes, and “stopping to think”, is something most people seldom practice, or plainly don't do it anymore.

What I am proposing to share here, are suggestions on how to understand better yourself, and everyone else, by using this superb piece of code (Questioning and Reasoning 2.0b). It is not an easy task for anyone, especially adults, to ponder about themselves without breaking the already fragile self-confidence of most people today. Humankind was showered with Romanticism and time consuming work and technology over the last couple of centuries, which basically gave us unreachable ideals and long periods of lamentation. That, coupled with competition and savagery, two other efficient codelines of survival, shape the world we know and despise (over the internet) today.

A long time of very few threats to humankind and thus, the practice of not questioning some of our values, opinions, habits and patterns, makes our insatiable thirst of quick resolution and knowledge pursuit something highly dependable on others. And we become stuck with the only effective way of getting anything, from attention to valuable stuff. We “cry”, like babies, waiting for the mercy of our parents, or anyone. And adults of our current world are leading experts of reshaping the code of crying and even manipulating real or “aspiring” parents.

So, throughout the next postings, I will try to expose many of our patterns of living and incite the questioning of those same values. Most will feel obvious to the reader, and by feeling this I can declare some sucess, since “thinking the obvious is not worth questioning” is one of those dreaded constants of the brain. And we're here to hack it!

I truly hope this can be of help to someone, like it was for me. Again, it is not a easy and quick process. It's a self-journey of discovery one can simply achieve by changing little habits, like an update to our OS, or a full mapping of our systems, or maybe even... Evolution!

Thank you, for lending me your eyes and your time.

Again, with utmost care,

Gustavo