We Can't Say "No"

Why is it so difficult for us to say "No" when we don't want to do something?  Many say that we can't say "No" out of politness but guess what? Most of the time the effect of not saying "No" overcomes the  positive consequences of politness.  Others say we don't want to lose opportunities but guess what?  You will lose many others if you don't stand for your commitment on this one.  Others add; we want to help people but guess what?  In many circumstances, your agreement, if not implemented according to your promise, might be an obsticle.

However, I do believe that the problem is far more than politeness, lost opportunities and the need to help are concerned, it is a problem of wrong predictions. 

We are not programmed to plan for the future and we tend to make future predictions based on the present status or on similar previous experiences.  A past experience or a present event completely dictates our future assumptions in a country where tomorrow is uncertain in many aspects.  We lived decades of uncertainty and chaos at many levels so the concept of planning is almost inexistant.  The years of uncertainty that we lived give us an ideal image of the future so we tend to squeeze in all the pleasant events or ideals not taking into consideration other crucial real life factors.

The future is nothing but a continuous path on the time coordinate that might be affected by one's past or present decisions but can not be completely determined by the past or the present.  Think for a second and consider many variables before agreeing on future plans.  Eventually saying "No" when you can't do something will become easier and easier.

                                                              Image from Cartoon Clipart

Are We Really Smarter?

Social behavior varies from one culture to another and it is interesting how different people from different cultures react under certain circumctances.  However and in almost every culture, most people generalize or derive their conclusions about others from the first impression.   Many of us though leaves a bad first impression due to a very tempting assumption.

Many assume that they are smarter than the person they are talking to and guess what?  In many cases they are wrong.  Many of them think that this tricky move is buying them respect and power but in most cases this backfires really hard.  This is how many people do it here:

1. They talk to someone assuming they are smarter.
2. They realize they are not specially after ones disapproval on many inaccuracies or fallacies.
3. They retreat and give the person the space to express his/her point.
4. They end up talking to him/her as he/she is smarter.
5. They lose his/her respect.

Talking to a friend about that, he adds a very important observation;  "After their realization that they are not smarter, they proceed using the same conversation technique with another person and this goes on and on." 

The Push-Pull Dilemma

Wait next to a store that has a sign "push" on its door and count the number of people who pull the door instead.  I conducted this experiment on three different days for thirty minutes each.  I chose Monday (the most annoying working day), Friday (last working day) and Saturday (supposedly the problem free day) and guess how the results came out to be?

All the results from the three different days matched regardless of the pressure factors that were taken into consideration.  The result came out to be 85-89% of people did the wrong thing and only 11-15% of the people thought before attempting to open the door.

I said to myself: "Maybe, the sign is in English and even though you know what it means, you still have to think it so let me try a store with an Arabic sign on it "Idfaa3" (which means push in Arabic). I did exactly the same experiment and guess what the results came out to be?  Amazingly 82-85% of the people did the wrong step again.

So then I had to analyze this problem and I reached the following conclusion:

We are either highly intelligent and we keep our mind extremely occupied so we do not notice small details or it is easier for us to try all possibilites rather than giving our actions a thought.   Well, I don't think it is the first case and I hope it is not the second one so what is left is that there might be a flaw in my sampling process.

Arrogance: The Nation Number One Killer

Arrogance according to Merriam Webster is an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in a presumptuous claims or assumptions.  Here is the catch: "Assumptions" and Webster got right in our case.  Many in this country claim superiority over others in different ways but guess what?  All this superiority is built on irrelevant and fake assumptions.  This growing phenomena is the number one killer in our country and it is growing fast.  Besides all the obvious reasons from the creation of the "nouveau riche"  in the post-war era to the "copy-paste" method of many concepts from the West without passing through the normal evolution into those concepts, there is a socio-psychological reason behind this phenomena.

It seems to me that many of those who have this sense of arrogance in this country are those who either achieved something relatively minor or achieved nothing and they either truly believe that their achievements are significant or they know the limitation of their achievements.  Approaching this phenomena through this angle will definitely relieve you and will keep you sane if you want to live here.  People in this small society are very close to one another and this closeness automatically creates social pressure in addition to other forms of pressure. This pressure pushes one to achieve and many average persons are psychologically paying the price.  In case one's achievements were non-impressive or nonexistent, one has to create this wall between him/her and the society in order to hide one's weaknesses.  From behind this wall, one either has to amplify his/her minor achievements, invent virtual ones or has to materialistically substitute for his/her lacking in this aspect.  Don't get me wrong here; we all like luxury and we all seek to serve our comfort in the physical world but not to the point when our belongings define us or when it becomes a pillar of our identity.  This show off society makes many outside observers sick while when one try to look at this issue from this perspective, it actually makes one feel bad.