06. Harmful Thinking

Today, you may come across people with all kinds of strong sentimental attachments:

animal lovers, environmentalists, political supporters,

vegans, religious people, spiritualists, and so on.

I do not say it is a particularly good or a bad thing

to get sentimentally attached to any such cluster of ideas,

nor do I say all vegans, religious people, or animal lovers

are so emotionally involved in what they follow,

but it makes them susceptible to errors

if they let emotions override scientific facts.

I find myself inundated with messages from such groups:

be green, eat vegetables, do not hurt animals,

do not eat meat, protect mother Earth, eat organic,

go to church, meditate, go vote, find your consciousness from listening to me, and so on.

If you desperately try to promote something,

even if it is scientifically legitimate,

you would probably sound like a salesman.

And because we live in a world where so many want to sell you their stuff to make a profit,

some may associate your approach with that business tactic

and you would lose people's interest.

The following examples serve only to highlight a harmful way of thinking in a general sense, not to single out any particular group.

If there is any proof that eating vegetables improves one’s health, identify it and allow open criticism.

If you try to explain what spirituality is, please don't merely say “I feel it, that´s why it exists”,

because it is unscientific to just believe someone for what they are saying, especially if their claim is based on an opinion.

Or when you say it is immoral to eat animals, please explain what you mean by “immoral” and “animal”.

I suspect people often present their cause unscientifically because of an emotional entanglement.

But unfortunately, we can all fall prey to this game of feelings sometimes, and this is exactly why we should be aware of it.

If you have a wife it may be hard for you to accept that marriage is just an illusion, a game humans invented, a ritual.

You are prone to find any good reason for why you are married and you may not be objective because of that.

Try to convince a priest that there is no such thing as God.

It will be very unlikely for him to look at the evidence objectively just because religion composes his self-image.

His wife, children, and friends know and love him for who he is.

If he alters his outlook on God and religion, he risks severing his relationships and self-image.

The same may happen with one who devotes their entire life to eating vegetables because they think it will improve their health.

It may or may not be so, it doesn't matter; the point is that

if you scientifically show them that eating vegetables does not improved their health at all,

he/she may find it difficult to accept and internalize this information.

How can you tell a mother who lost a child that there is no God and no Heaven and that her son is lost forever?

The point I want to make is that we all can get trapped in emotional games and thus become prone to subjective analyses of reality.

I don't care why animal lovers love their pets so much or what animal they love,

or why some people do not eat meat and others believe in Gods; this is not the concern of this article.

The focus is on the liability of erroneous thinking due to emotional involvement.

But we titled this video “Harmful Thinking”. Why is that?

I was born in a little patch of planet Earth which some people call Romania.

Just another cluster of people on a patch of Earth separated by mere values and for monetary incentive from the other patches.

There, many people survive with less than $200-300 a month.

And I am talking about families, not individuals. Try to split $200 with two adults and two-three kids. Pay electric bills, buy clothes, food, etc.

Another characteristic of Romania is its stray dogs.

Dogs that live on the streets and eat from accessible garbage bins or whatever else they find.

There is no doubt that these dogs can be dangerous.

Dogs bites occur on a regular basis as a result of the stray dogs situation.

In 2012 alone, around 16,000 people were bitten by dogs, in Bucharest the capital of Romania.

Out of this 3300 were children. At least 3 deaths have occurred in Bucharest, as a result of dog packs bitting citizens.

I remember when I lived in Romania

that there were many cases in which these dogs attacked people, a few times mortally wounding them.

Happened to me, happened to my friends, happened to people I knew.

This is some footage recorded when I was in Romania for the holidays.

Every time I had to go outside or come back home I had to go through at least one pack of 8-9 big dogs.

You may say they don't seem dangerous

(although the video shows otherwise),

but it is undeniable that there is a risk.

Not to mention the sanitation hazards they can create

from the mess they make while scavenging through trash

or the many diseases they may carry.

But here is the ironic part of the situation:

many people in Romania actually fuel the problem.

They feed these dogs and make sure they don't get euthanized or taken away.

They are the ones that bring the dogs from elsewhere and raise them in these public spaces.

And this leads us to the harmful way of thinking I am talking about: being emotionally trapped in the situation.

There is no way one can sit down and talk to these people,

even with statistics and proofs of why street dogs pose a danger and an overall discomfort for the population.

These people often raise their voices and scream of their love for the dogs.

But they don't do that for the millions of pigs slaughtered every Christmas in their backyards,

because this is a Romanian tradition, after all.

Or the millions of lambs slaughtered every Easter for the same purpose.

Or the rats, bugs, chickens, flies, and other living creatures killed by Romanians and most humans out there, for various reasons.

Now imagine how some "rational" beings would perceive the situation:

#1. The street dogs are a potential danger for humans, create distress for many, and in some cases directly threaten or take people's lives, plus...

#2. Many people in Romania are extremely poor and can barely afford anything to eat. Plus...

#3. Methods to resolve the problem wouldn't be able to help every single dog, therefore, some dogs will have to be put down.

This equals: The dogs that cannot be saved and are going to be killed should serve as a source of food to help support the poor.

I am sure many would feel disgusted by this idea, but this just another example of "harmful thinking" at work.

From your current perspective you probably couldn't imagine anyone eating dog meat,

but you must consider that your view is based only on your own beliefs.

Beliefs that aren't prevalent in other cultures.

And clinging only to your beliefs without evaluating the full scope of options severely limits your possibilities.

Dog meat is regularly consumed in China, South Korea, and even some parts of Switzerland

And although scientifically there is no harm in eating dog meat,

many people don't even consider the option and continue to starve.

- Don't you think it's cruel to eat dog?

- How is it cruel. Eating beef is
even crueler, you know.

Cows helps you plow fields.
That's much crueler.

- There's no need to eat pet dogs,
but regular dogs are for food.

There's nothing extraordinary about that.

We are building our own nation. Don't you need money for that?

People raise dogs to make money.

It's also to help China flourish.

- Where do they come from?

Sir, where are these dogs from?

- They're are raised in big groups on farms, these aren't pets.

- If you raise them on farms, how come they're so cheap?

Farming dogs should be expensive, you've got to

- Pets are expensive. These aren't pets!

If they were pets we wouldn't want to kill them, get it?

These aren't pets.

A lot of foreingers think dogs are people's friends...

Yes, they are...and cows aren't.

- Some dogs are people's friends and others are for food.

In India, cows are sacred.

If you eat cows in England, all of India is against you.

It's the same logic.

This sentimental way of thinking based on culture restricts people's ability to survive

and is a detriment to the poor and the society.

As a matter of fact, the poor people you have seen in that video,

the ones that were scavenging through the bins,

were accused of eating stray dogs, and many were disgusted by this

despite the fact that the ones complaining feel no mercy in killing other animals for food.

It’s not that I advocate eating dogs as a solution for starvation

(we can probability feed the entire world population without killing any animal),

I just want to emphasize that many people,

even when their life is in danger (starvation),

are more inclined to act on an emotional basis over a rational one,

and that can lead to their own or other people's harm.

We wouldn't have gone very far with this type of LIMITED thinking.

In some regions, especially some states in India, the slaughter of cattle is prohibited, and eating cow meat is a taboo.

This is because of their dominant religious beliefs;

sentiments before reason.

You can probably find some Hindu people who eat dogs as their traditional meal

and you will definitely find romanian people eating cows.

This is just a matter of culture.

But even if these people are starving,

they still confine themselves to their individual beliefs.

There is a plethora of rules and restrictions

when it comes to eating food in this world

due to cultural or religious beliefs.

If there was a beehive in a Romanian public building,

logically, people would remove it immediately without giving it a second thought.

They would kill hundreds of bees without feeling guilty

and they would argue that it was a potential danger for all of them if they would not do that.

But when faced with a slightly different scenario,

some Romanian's actions seem to be contradictory.

A funny thing happened many years ago around the place at which I stay in Romania.

A sheep got lost somehow and ended up in the parking lot of some nearby buildings,

the same lot stray dogs use as a hangout.

I remember some dog-loving people saying that sheep makes lots of noises,

it defecates all over the parking lot, scavenges through bins, maybe it’s dangerous for the kids passing by and that we should get rid of it.

And they did so in few days.

But yet they didn’t raise a finger to deal with the dangers

of the wild dogs since obviously they don’t defecate, bark at people, scavenge through garbage, or pose any danger whatsoever.

In India, if instead of cows there were chickens on the streets,

people would probably happily kill some for tonight’s dinner,

but still never harm a cow under any circumstances, no matter how harsh.

Ten years or so ago, a family, with which my family had connections,

did something many others are still doing today.

They chose church over a hospital when their daughter was having a seizure.

Luckily for the girl, she survived, but not due to the church as you may realize, just by chance.

Many other such scenarios happen all over the world

when beliefs override scientific reasoning,

but the outcome is usually not a positive one.

In contrast, one great example of how you should not rely

solely on emotional ideologies to solve a problem

is demonstrated by the way that the parents of a sick boy, Sam, manage their kid's illness.

(Sam) - When I build Legos, I feel that I can...

create my own world and kind of going to that place where everything is based on my rules.

As a child, Sam was diagnosed with progeria.

A disease that makes the body age at an extremely elevated rate,

- There's really no way of telling what I'd be like If I didn't have Progeria.

I wish I could ride any rollercoaster I wanted to ride like ever...

Like I wish...

even thought I am terrfied about them

It would be cool to know that I can try them out.

, thus many with the disease do not even reach their 20s

i didnt pull myself in front of you to have you feel bad for me

I pulled myself in front of you to let you know that you don't need to feel bad for me

Because...this is how I want you to get to know me. This is my life

And this Progeria is part of it. It's not a major part of it, but it's part of it.

Both of Sam’s parents are scientists (physicians)

and they dedicated their lives to find a cure for their child

instead of praying for him or not doing anything at all.