I don’t know, whether it is an addiction or ritual but I like to call it ritual as it sounds positive. So in general, the best of part of my day is the ritual of watching a part of some historical Korean drama while taking my lunch (Once, I was calling it, “fill in the blanks” meaning to enjoy doing my favorite things in time-gaps instead of waiting for a leisure time but now it falls; watching movies, reading and writings are my favorites). I like this ritual as it allows me to see how people in other cultures rationalize their acts and behaviors. (Currently watching Yi San; though, the characters in the story are very soft and the story is very slow and sometimes even boring but still, I like it as it makes me realize that, although we all cherish the same values but we rationalize them differently. Slowly, I am also realizing that if we set aside advances in technology and knowledge in general, the history doesn't change much in terms of values. The only thing that changes are the ways we rationalize them. That also happens across the cultures. So either we walk across the cultures or across the history, it is the rationalizations that change not basic values). As in humans, 90% of Serotonin is in gut and the rest in the CNS so just by guess; I hope that this ritual (nourishing body and mind simultaneously) also increases Serotonin levels in my blood (it is just a guess).
Yesterday, I was very late in taking my lunch (the drama part was also very uneventful, hehe). The net effect, I was feeling so sleepy that I thought, it is wiser if instead of pushing myself and tiring myself while not able to make any progress in my work, I should get a nap for an hour and come back to work with a fresh mind. I set my alarm for an hour. When I woke up, it was dark. I checked the time and found that I had slept for three hours instead of one. I even didn’t notice the loud alarm (it was very deep sleep). Initially I felt bad about it but soon my mind started its work, “rationalizing the act”. You know, brain consumes 25% of oxygen and glucose in blood and if one is involved in an intensive problem solving thinking process, the brain consumes almost as much energy as an athlete pushes hard his body to break a record. So, it is natural to get exhausted after a mental work although the body appears to be idle in the process.
Unconvinced by my back-rationalizing, while still lying there, the thoughts of why ancient people about cared those hard questions, “who am I?”, “Why am I here?” “Where will I go?” come to me (I guess, it is the way mind work. It is good at diverting attention and escapes the troubles it faces. This totally unrelated thought was an escape strategy). In nutshell all those questions are linked with purpose of life. Usually, we tend to think that the “primitive people” think simple things and as people advance in terms of knowledge, they questions become more sophisticated. These are really hard questions that still people struggle with. Because, I had just awaken up so the thought of “Morpheus” came to me. In Greek mythology, Morpheus is the God of sleep and dreams. it can take any human forms to appear into dreams (Morphine is named after it).
In a way, it allowed me to hypothesize that because ancient people had not much understanding of nature so they needed explanations to match their life styles (It is because we are highly addicted to brain’s reward system, Dopamine. When our ideas are appreciated or we think, they are right; our brains reward us with dopamine). Coming back to dreams, it is still mystery. Although there are a lot of explanations but none of them are satisfactory. If I was living in ancient time, the belief that Morpheus appears in different forms in my dreams would be a very surreal idea and my brains would definitely rewarded me with lot of dopamine shots.
Although, Science is snatching all those surreal narratives but on other hand it has given us another fancy way of rationalizing and getting rewarded by brain and that is “Hypothesizing”. Brain is very good at finding patterns among very random things and constructing a hypothesis out them to rationalize things.
So what was the pattern here? Well, I guess, in order to get a higher dose of dopamine, when we rationalize, we try to link with something superior and it is perhaps why, Greeks mythology is filled with Gods and Goddesses. Those complex questions of purpose are linked with superior beings to feel superb. It is just an egoistic nature of men that do not accept things as they are (and perhaps better not to). Things have not changed much. Now that modern men think of themselves in-charge instead, we tend to think that we understand most of things and we are right. It appears to me that in future, someone while lying in his bed might be thinking about the ways we rationalize things currently and might try to find a pattern to make a sense out of them. Who knows?
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