by Dyske Suematsu • February 26, 2012
Derridean Deconstruction Therapy (DDT) is a new school of psychotherapy that aims to find your emotional or psychological crutches and Deconstruct them. It can also be called Zen therapy as crutches can also be called "attachments". This method is particularly helpful for those who dismiss the idea of God. Instead of entirely denouncing the act of appealing to higher authorities, they simply replace God with other noble concepts like science, reason, rationality, family, conscience, morality, evolution, art, love, humanity, nature, etc.. In DDT, these sacred cows are Deconstructed so that their hierarchies are reversed to reveal their unconscious assumptions. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • December 21, 2011
Defense mechanism is a way to cope with inconvenient reality; one that could potentially cause us pain. We develop an unconscious habit to block out or distort certain areas of reality. This means we are blind to these areas of reality for which we develop defense mechanisms. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • October 22, 2011
The majority of wealth is now concentrated at the top of the social ladder. This is particularly true in the US, and the gap is widening every year. This, I believe, is because of efficiency, not China. Today the best ideas can efficiently and quickly propagate worldwide, and everyone can efficiently find them and buy them. This makes the owners of these ideas filthy rich, and those ideas that are not the best, can hardly survive. It’s not just transfer of information that is fast; wealth too is transferred very fast and efficiently. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • October 18, 2011
Think of yourself as an iceberg. In the illustration below, you are on the right, and on the left is someone who works in the same field but is more successful than you. The tips of these icebergs are identical, and they represent talent. That is, you are just as talented as your rival is. Now, the rest of the icebergs represents things like confidence, social skills, empathy, ability to manage stress, negotiation skills, understanding what other people want, marketing skills, health, business savvy, etc.. In other words, it represents everything else that the public does not care to know about you. Read »
by Jake O'Callaghan • August 15, 2011
Being in high school I often hear “she’s weird” or “that’s weird.” I always like to ask why. What makes something or someone weird or normal? Something is weird when it breaks societal norms. For example, if someone puts his hand over his mouth while talking (in everyday conversations), you would probably consider that trait as weird (but not necessarily him as a person). But why? Because people don’t normally put their hands over their mouths while talking. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • July 23, 2011
In the last 10 years, I don't think computers increased our productivity. The processing power of our computers increased dramatically in that period, but for the vast majority of things we do on computers, the increase in power is actually irrelevant because the bottleneck is our brain powers; how quickly we can respond to computers. For instance, as I type this essay, my computer is using a tiny fraction of its power. The computer I was using 25 years ago had more than enough processing power to handle what I'm doing right now. In terms of writing (which is still a huge chunk of what we do on computers), the advancement in computer hardware was pretty much irrelevant. It didn't make us write any faster, because the bottleneck is our own brains, not computers. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • June 26, 2011
“Small talk” has been a bane of my existence all my life. I could never figure out why small talk has such a critical role in socializing with others. Why is it that trying to talk about particle physics at a party is looked down on? In fact, why are parties necessary in the first place? Why can’t we just meet with one another, sit down in a quiet place and exchange our knowledge and insights? As silly as it may sound, this question has baffled me all my life. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • February 7, 2011
These days, we tend to assume that “diversity” is a universally desirable quality, especially when applied to a group of people. I’m guessing it’s because the theory of evolution is now thoroughly in the domain of popular culture, and because “diversity” is a key concept that allows the process of natural selection to work. My daughter, Annika, attends a public school that prides itself for its “diversity”. In terms of the racial makeup of the school, it is indeed diverse, but having spent a year and a half there, I began to wonder what “diversity” means under the skin. I believe that diversity in and of itself is neither good nor bad. The question is how it is implemented. The fact that any school is “diverse” by itself does not mean anything. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • January 17, 2011
Other than the couple’s counseling my wife and I had about 10 years ago, I’ve never had any therapy. It’s not that I had anything against the idea of therapy; it’s just that I never thought to seek outside help. Many men don’t ask for directions when they get lost, and I’m one of them (although, in many situations, not asking for directions is rather stupid). My wife is now studying to be a therapist, so our apartment is littered with books about psychology and psychotherapy. One of them, which was sitting on our dinner table, is “A Guide to Rational Living” by Albert Ellis. My wife told me that it’s one of the classics in psychology. I started reading it and was intrigued by his definition of “neurotic” because I felt like he was describing me personally, and at the same time I was surprised to find that he talks like I do; arrogant, sarcastic, and annoyingly rational. Later I learned that Ellis himself was “neurotic”. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • January 7, 2011
When feminists criticize or analyze men, they usually assume that all men are like Napoleon, Type A personality, aspired to be a leader, wants to conquer the world and leave his name in history. This is equivalent to assuming that all women want to stay home and raise children. I believe at least half of men do not aspire to be like Napoleon or Bill Gates; they just want to live a simple, modest life. Think of the father of Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol”. If it were culturally acceptable for him to stay home with his kids, wouldn’t you think he would have loved to do so? Read »
by Jim Hamlyn • November 7, 2010
Some friends of mine are having difficulties with their five year old son who has started swearing whilst at his new school. They've tended not to discourage him from swearing at home and now they’re faced with the task of socialising him into a set of values which are somewhat different to their own but which are held by the social sphere into which their son is being initiated. It makes one wonder who’s actually being manipulated to conform the most: the child or his parents? Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • October 24, 2010
In essays, books, and interviews, many artists and writers have explained how their creative processes work. They can be quite different but at the core, there appears to be two schools. Let me quote two writers representing the respective schools describing their creative processes. First, Steven Pressfield from his book “The War of Art” Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • August 8, 2010
I wasn’t allowed to eat junk food when I was growing up in Japan, so when I moved to the US on my own, I went nuts eating at fast food restaurants practically every day. I think everyone has similar experiences. Some women of my generation were forbidden to have pink toys or Barbie dolls because their mothers firmly believed in the feminism of the 60s and the 70s. So when they gained independence, they went nuts surrounding themselves in all things pink. Some people were forced to go to Catholic schools and now they passionately hate Catholicism. Some are even making artistic careers out of their hatred of it. We see this pattern everywhere, every generation, culture, and gender. So why do we parents keep repeating the same mistakes? Didn’t we learn the lesson from our own experiences? Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • August 7, 2010
I would say my friend Ian is a little creepy but in a good way. He is a talented photographer and cinematographer, stylish and well-groomed. You might call him “metrosexual” but there is a strong hippie quality to him that invalidates that label. Even though I’ve known him for years, I would still watch my ass if I ever had to take a shower with him in a gym. There is something mysterious about him. Usually when someone is mysterious, it’s because he is keeping some aspects of himself secret, but in Ian’s case, I think he finds himself mysterious. Every now and then, we sit down at a cafe and try to solve this mystery together. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • August 1, 2010
At 3 years of age, we don’t yet know how to lie or what a lie is. So, “Kids say the darndest things.” It’s remarkable to see how consistently kids deal with truths. If you ask them how you look, they might say, “You look really fat.” They are not yet capable of predicting the emotional consequences of their statements, so everything comes out uncensored. As they grow older, they become aware of the fact that other people have feelings too, and this consideration takes a priority over being honest or truthful. In other words, they become capable of empathy. If so, why do we tell our kids to “always tell the truth”, and scold them for lying when we ourselves lie left and right? Read »
by Jim Hamlyn • July 29, 2010
Almost everyone is aware of the challenges posed by information management within our increasingly digitized world, but meanwhile something is spreading itself throughout cyberspace, largely uncontrolled and unregulated. Like a cancer it replicates and attaches itself as an unwanted and uncontrollable accretion invading digital space in vast proportions, consuming progressively larger quantities of energy and leaving frustration, stress and misery in its wake. This isn't some kind of natural or automated process that I'm talking about here but rather the product of a Faustian ignorance, error and neglect. Some have referred to this proliferation of information as “Data Smog” but I’d like to suggest that it’s a good deal more threatening than a fine haze of irritating particles. Smog shifts and changes and often clears on a windy day. On the other hand, a cancer which grows out of control, threatens the very existence of vital organs and processes and therefore needs to be kept in check, if not eradicated altogether, before it threatens life itself. Read »
by William Byatt • July 15, 2010
The Luddites held that the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution would lead to a moral degradation of society. Many modern Luddites often argue the same thing—that technological progress opens up the door for deeper and deeper immoralities and creates a darker and darker world. Read »
by Jim Hamlyn • July 2, 2010
How do leaders and people in authority gain an accurate picture of what’s going on around them and how sensitive (in both senses of the word) should they be towards criticism? Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • June 11, 2010
We all seem to outgrow our own emotions. The things I held sacred in my youth are no longer so. The songs I used to think were divinely beautiful sound rather banal now. My universal and eternal ideologies crumbled and blew away over time. This seems to happen not just to individuals, but to the whole human race. As we have become more rational, many superstitious and prejudiced beliefs and rituals have faded away. For instance, not so long ago, race had an inviolable meaning for many people. It just felt right that we organized ourselves according to the colors of our skin. We assumed that our own race was superior to others. Such convictions were largely emotional, but many probably believed that their convictions were perfectly rational. As we educated ourselves better, we came to realize that we were misguided. Read »
by Dyske Suematsu • March 3, 2010
Dear DoGooders: I am writing to you because I noticed that you use DoGood Headquarters' advertising service. Please give me a moment to explain to you why DoGood's service is ultimately harmful to all of us. This is not a simple matter to explain but if you could read this letter to the end, I believe we could agree that everyone will lose by using DoGood's service. So, bear with me. Read »
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