Author Archives: Kamran Numvar

Pearl

Using the word crazy about someone, is certainly a double-edge sword. I don’t know of any other word that could equally be both offensive and flattering. On the one hand ‘crazy’ is indicative of certain behavioral and social abnormalities. On the other hand, if you’re crazy the question that comes up is: who defines those behavioral and social norms. Unpredictability draws attention and poses questions. Lack of continuity in social behaviors portrays mysteriousness, entertains, and makes one fascinating. These notions are crazy, because conformists passionately find the dynamic nature of such attributes against the security of consensus.

The other day after lunch and an Irish goodbye, she walked away looking pensive. I sat in the car and looked back and it seemed she was walking indecisively -as if she wasn’t sure where she was headed. Then, she pulled a cigarette out of her loud black bag and started smoking. She was looking up every now and then while smoking. She then turned left at the intersection without looking back or sideways. She was only looking up or down. Her steps were telling something that I couldn’t quite put into words. I sat there for a few minutes thinking … I couldn’t even guess what she was thinking, or if she was thinking about anything.

Pearl is a person I know for such long time. I don’t even know what it means to not have her around. She’s one of a few friends who can sit down and talk in length about things like the symbolic character in Oblomov. She claims to read books and articles very quickly by scanning the key words in each page and then making a logical connection between each page and segment of the write-up. We’ve had ups and downs in our friendship mainly because we talk directly and say it the way it is. If there was ever a third person who was listening to our conversation, s/he could conclude that we’re both rude or brash. But that’s not how we feel. To the contrary, we think our straight forward approach to our conversations makes our friendship unique and never-ending.

I should confess that I find crazy people to be fun and interesting. If you’re a normal person, that’s my weakness I guess. My friendship with Pearl entails no dull moment because she is never distracted by quotidian concerns. Every second of her life is laser-focused on something, or another. Yes, she disappears for months and then comes back and drops a bomb on me, but also she continually talks to me about me in the most explicit way.

Crazy friends change your life into a sort of lurid technicolor format. You get good attention and you get bad attention, but you get attention. It’s like you’re in a theatre and the lights go down making you wait for the beginning of the show. I prefer to be in a theatre as oppose to watching a lame black-and-white movie on the couch.

Bamboozled

The other day, I was supposed to meet with a friend. After thirteen emails, three text messages, and an old-fashion and obsolete form of communication called “phone-call”, we decided to postpone our 30 minutes get-together. Imagine, we even had to talk to each other to get to that point.

That made me pensive quite substantially. I felt bamboozled to be spending so much time on scheduling a get-together. So I decided to devise a formula for determining as to whether or not it’s worth meeting with someone. The formula is actually pretty simple: if scheduling a coffee get-together takes more time than the actual meeting time, well, forget about it.

The underlying problem is not so much that we have become so fucking selfish. The problem is that we have lost track of who actually fits the description of a friend worthy of trust and attention. The social networks help people friend each other. But all that means, you keep track of the remnant of your social circle besides your actual friends. Without these tools, chances are some of us would meet for a coffee on the other side. That being said, we’re all headed in the right direction of being alone together.

Should Have Called!

Lee is a single father of a beautifully protesting teenager. He works hard. Between that, all the responsibilities at home, and other personal tasks there is not much time left for anything else. Lee holds a socially graceful status amongst friends and the hardest task for people around him is to dislike him. As a friend, he’s the most miss-able person. Lee is not very much into gadgets and computers, and it was only recently when he finally put up a profile on Facebook. In one of the social gatherings, Lee got introduced to Jane and they kind of hit it off.

Lee and Jane started hanging out, doing sporty kind of activities, and having long conversation. After a while, Lee felt a connection and decided to ask Jane out to dinner to get to know her in a better environment for a face to face interaction. So he sent a text message to Jane, which by then, was the preferred method of communication between the two, asking [Hi Jane, what are you doing on Thursday night?]. The response to that text was something that left Lee in a state whereby he felt both failed and helpless. Jane’s response said [are you asking me out on a date by texting? If so, you ‘should have called!’]

Factually, some 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. When asked those texters how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone, 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53% said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14% said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation. Heavy text users are much more likely to prefer texting to talking. Some 55% of those who exchange more than 50 messages a day say they would rather get a text than a voice call.

Nowadays communication have become a multistep, multiplatform process. A friend of mine likes to talk on the phone, but only after you have sent an email to propose a chat, during which you actually determine if a call is necessary. By the time voice meets voice, I’m spent. To her credit, she gives out all of her contact information freely. The other friend doesn’t want to talk on the phone because her work requires her to be on the phone all day long, so she prefers text and facebook messages.

With all available forms of communication, every newly formed relationship seems to come with operating instructions such as : “Try my cell first, then shoot me an e-mail. Or circle back to me via Facebook wall if you want, I’m very responsive on there”. On top of all that, contact itself is subject to infinite whimsies like: an e-mail can go to spam. A call can bump up against a voice mailbox not taking new messages. Its owner, managing too many mailboxes, has let it fill.

Just about 15 or so years ago, we used to have only letters and landline phones. Those were the good old days when writing a letter was considered personal, romantic, and wholesome. If Lee had met Jane 15 years ago, all he should have done was to pick up the phone and call Jane to set up a date and Jane would have most probably said “yes”. My educated guess is they would have probably had a peachy time together, too. But now, they first need to clear the cloud of misunderstanding. Things have spun out of proportion in terms of communication between human beings. You hear so much about how instantly reachable we all are, how super-connected, with our smartphones, laptops, and tablets. But the frustrating truth is that we’ve become so accessible we’re often inaccessible. The simple act of getting to any of us has become a tortured and tortuous process. In such situation, one important concept that suffers the most is: communication adequacy. No one knows what’s an adequate form of communication anymore. The know-it-all gods that we are, we start forming our own adequacies which maps to no one else’s.

Looking from the outside as a person who introduced Lee to Jane, I see that they have already put up a thick wall to defend their assertions -because a few days after that infamous interaction between the two, Jane texted me to say [Lee asked me out via text. You should teach him how to ask a lady out] … …, I waited for a couple of hours, and just to make the whole drama more exciting, I replied to Jane on facebook and said: [if you wanted to discuss your drama with Lee, you ‘Should Have Called!’].

Doubt

In general, doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. Doubt might encompass cynicism, but also genuine questioning. In the context of relationships doubt often takes the backseat, because its very existence leads to regret -which is a huge no-no in today’s hollow love subculture.

No matter how much you let doubt in, there are those encounters and choices in different relationships where you look back, and you feel like you have been drunk for the entire relationship –like the one I had with Golady. The fact that there is association between the relationship and the feeling of drunkenness encompasses doubt in the judgment within the context.

For instance, one of the visual events I can never forget happened when there was a conversation between Golady and I around the contradiction between her conventional nature and my unshackled mindset. When it was obvious that the gap wasn’t to be filled, it seemed thousands of crystal shards of all sizes suddenly explode around her all at once, creating shallow scratches to deep wounds as some embed themselves deep into her flesh. While shaking her heaad in disbelief, the corner of her lips pulled up faintly. She looked up momentarily and tried to mentally shrug off the pain…

Many years have passed, but I still vividly remember that moment and doubt as to whether or not I handled it gracefully. Yes, it is safe to say that Golady was conventional by nature which is very much unlike me. But the doubt that still clouds that moment cries: if conformity and rebelliousness can agree on anything, it is that sometimes it’s worth betting on unorthodoxy of the heart.

Kelt

Mr. Kelt was a well-honed historian. As his family hails from Scandinavia, he was very familiar with the Norwegian aquavit which has its maturation at sea. The maturation process includes: transported in aged oak casks from Norway to the Equator and then back again. The idea began to form that this was a method which should be tried to see if it works. The idea was to recreate a quality given by the sea, this could be beneficial and a further step on the road to perfection. With assistance from special container, the decision was that the best way to effectuate the sea voyage would be to let the container stay on a ship that did a continuous world round-trip taking 90-110 days depending on weather.

Further trials were made to optimize the effects. Smaller barrels proved to be most efficient. Traditional oak barrels are used which must be extensively research. The barrels must only be filled to 70% capacity so that there is ample room for the cognac to wash around inside the barrel which facilitates contact and extraction from the wood as well as exchange of oxygen.

The process takes an easterly direction. It has been experienced that there is a considerable difference between going east or west. For some unexplained reason a westbound, does not produce as good an effect as going eastbound. After leaving France, the direction takes cognac to a few Northern European ports, then heads south into the Mediterranean, through the Suez canal into the Arabian Sea and from there on to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and across the Pacific to the United States and Los Angeles. From Los Angeles we turn south for the Panama Canal and then north again following the east coast of the US to New York before the return across the Atlantic Ocean back to France. After returning, the cognacs are allowed a period of rest before bottling. This period varies between 3-5months.

All of the above takes place to make the best cognacs in the world and it is natural to find perfection through studying history and traditional methods rather than looking to the future and technology.

Atlantis

Like many other ridiculously regular young boys, I wanted to be a pilot if you asked me 30 years ago. The fascination, which continues to this day, was less about airplanes and more about flying. In such embryonic realm of childhood, Atlantis was merely perceived as a super airplane that could fly higher. Atlantis felt like a toy which could take me to the flirtatiously blinking stars, and help hearing the voice of the moon.

Today, the endless-looking future unwelcomingly represents itself like a harsh mistress. We all watched the last launch of Atlantis last week, and underneath all the spectacles there was an inane anguish because the toy was to be bagged.

Retirement of Atlantis provokes opinion and conspiracy. Setting aside all the speculations and personal notes, there are two schools of thoughts on the subject. Obviously the first one coveys deep negativity and asserts that we’re giving up on the space program. In addition, the absolute fact that many states such as Texas and Florida will take a hit on the job loss adds fuel to the fire of conspiracy in that space science has hit a wall .

Except, retirement of Atlantis after 30 years of loyal service isn’t unreasonable. For instance, Atlantis was initially designed and planned to cost $10 million per flight. The actual current allocated fund surpasses $1.2 billion per flight which can’t sustain. Or, the initial systems of the shuttle are now 30 years old, and are not kept up-to-date with the fully computerized systems of the recent years. That’d make the shuttle like a butterfly flying through bullets in space. Luckily, the fund will now spread to new and existing NASA initiatives such as robotic missions, planetary science, climate science, exploration technology, and space technology. The last two, which are highly critical in enabling NASA to explore farther out in the space, are getting 220% and 113% increase in funding respectively.

No matter what, the retirement of Atlantis is one more indication of the fact that my childhood is utterly over. I can wishfully hope that the two impossibly different veins of awareness and childish-unconscious can now make the best of friends, at some gray point in the infinite space.

Tennis Ball

Is tennis ball yellow or green? How’s that for a short topic of discussion between several senior corporate dudes? I suggested the color of tennis ball is both because color technically is about wavelength and frequency intervals, and despite categorically-defined notion of yellow and green red, there are infinite combinations of the two characteristics that could fall in both yellow and green color buckets. I asserted there is a spectrum that’s continuous, and we shouldn’t think about it categorically.

 

Albeit, I was thinking about the question in its technical context … a few minutes later, her is the response from a colleague whom I highly respect: [What Kamran’s asking about is a construct referred to in the cognitive science literature as “categorical perception.”  Categorical perception of entities that otherwise exist on a continuum (whether speech phoneme categories, musical notes, or in this case, colors) is closely related to the individual perceiver’s previous experience with similar examples (“exemplars”) of the category, which drives activation of those examples in memory, followed by resulting categorization as appropriate. Hence at a very high level, in the context of being exposed to an ambiguous stimulus to be categorized (a la the TENNIS BALL), if your cognitive system contains a stronger
representation/activation of yellow category exemplars, then you’re more likely to perceive YELLOW.  If the green category is stronger in your cognitive system, then you’re more likely to perceive GREEN].

 

Well, thinking about these notions in their conceptual context, I think there is also a spectrum around mental-models and our approach to resolution. At the one end stands attributes such as simplistic, certain, and disconnected. At the other end of the spectrum there is a mindset that attributes to complicated, gray, and jointed. It goes without saying that there are many combinations in between of course, but beneath, it all falls into one’s tolerance for higher degree of conviction or doubt –in the mental process.

 

Some of us start our mental process by convictions by default, because it’s a more certain place and it brings more sense of comfort while casting opinions. If there was any representation of one’s mindset who starts by conviction, it’d probably look like a matrix or a well-organized bookshelf. On the other hand, some of us start the process of thinking from the place of doubt by default, because we get high on the sense of open-exploration and journeying.

Flow

When times get tough, “Just Flow”, he said! … what does that mean? … Who knows. It’s hard to identify or measure it. But you know it when you experience it. I saw it several years ago through a late friend, and then ended up liking the whole notion of flowing.

I experienced one of the most interesting trips to Thailand, last month. One of my friends and fellow travelers posted a comprehensive blog about it, so I will only talk about the flowing part.

The fact is human relationships are hard no matter what, because of the dynamic between individuals being a function of time, location, and state of mind. That’s why getting along takes so much energy and consideration –which is why some people prefer not to get along. Albeit, that’s not an entirely positive phenomenon for social creatures like human beings.

And then you have floaters. Those who sit at the edge of a lot of different conversations and group of people, but never end up being fully a part of anything. They share a little bit of everything with everyone. There is either no conviction, or no doubt which is why they virtually portray high degree of tolerance for a lot of common nonsense.

On the other hand, one who flows has wide variety of interests in a lot of things. There is a high degree of genuine tolerance for curiosity and doubt. There is a profound sense of comfort for discomfort, and an essential belief in curiosity. Unlike floaters, the person who flows sits at heart of a lot of things and finds herself/himself a big part of them.

Just Flow! especially when you take a trip to Maya Bay.

Reasonable Discourse

There are trends in the way of thinking that almost always distort facts and specifics to the detriment of the entire thought process. Not to say that facts and specifics are the only important details of our mental models, but they are important. Here are some of those trends:

–Filtering: taking the negative details and magnifying them.

–Polarized: tending to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground.

–Overgeneralization: coming to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence.

–Mind Reading: without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do.

–Catastrophizing: continuously expecting disaster.

–Personalization: the tendency to relate everything around you, to yourself.

–Blaming: holding other people responsible for your pain.

–Necessitating: having a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act.

–Emotional Reasoning: believing that what you feel must be true-automatically.

–Labeling: generalizing one or two qualities into a negative global judgment.

–Rewarding: expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off.

Often, these trends of thinking come with flavors of care and love. But that doesn’t defeat the fact that the capacity of these thinking models is limited to the time required for their discovery by others. At the end, no intellectual model betters tolerance for doubt, curiosity, and reasonable discourse.

Bullshit

There is so much bullshit in the leading trends of our popular culture. Our daily habits tend to be relevant to some opinions, we vicariously like to explore. Then we frequently observe the habit-to-opinion ratio, and as soon as that ratio slightly tops the bullshit bar, we characterize our habits as opinion, facts, or principles.

The fact of the matter is that certain attributes of bullshit might imply essential validity to the preliminary and independent account of human behavior. As such, I will expand on some various forms of deviating the attention to the matters that reside beneath certain trends.

I disclaim to know much, or have any leniency towards any trend, or not. But we should really see that people, at times not always, make thoughtless choices just to influence or shape perception of self. In that realm, you find republican meaning “high-status”, atheist meaning “smart”, and corporate-shoe-lover-princes meaning “sex and the city McFabulous”. The underlying fact with all these people is that they have too much time thinking about themselves. They think about their status, outfits, thighs, and career. And if they already have a good career, they think about how to be a spiritual Yoga teacher who eats, loves, and prays. A decent and selfless person doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about oneself, because they got shit to do. This is why you see a lot of celebrity women getting husbands after they adopt. The kids put everyone on notice shouting: Yo Bitch, Hello! It’s not all about you anymore.

Or, in relationship realm, for instance, it usually goes something like this: you meet a person called Morgan. Morgan is not really available for a relationship on some condition that absolutely precludes availability. Morgan gets around town on a skateboard wearing a shawl on a sunny day with 85 degree temperature. Or maybe Morgan just comes right out and says something obscure and open to interpretation like, “You can’t push emotions to love someone. It needs to happen all by itself”. Now, you might bullshit your way to trying to significant-other Morgan. You hang out with Morgan and have fun attaching yourself by high amount of oxytocin that kicks in. But beneath, you know you want more but you don’t tell Morgan. That’s your dirty secret, well, just between you and 100 of your close friends. You keep waiting and hoping that Morgan will figure this out. Guess what? Morgan will never figure it out because Morgan is already very comfortable living life without and away from you. You should have stopped bullshiting yourself in the first place giving up the notion that you could change anything.

Our social values have diluted. Men want to have it all going with the tempo of god, looking athletic in a 3 ft deep swimming pool, or being fascinating on Facebook wall posts. Women see no value in being a decent mother as the foundation of life. And these two essentially unattractive and confused group of creatures are supposed to attract each other –which is why everyone needs a shrink.

As human beings, we exist only in response to other things and what’s formed in our unconscious, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing other things. Also, there is nothing proven with experience, to support the theory that it is easy to know self. Our natures are, indeed, notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And in such messy and convoluted situation, honesty itself is bullshit.