No more “I’m sorrys”

Terry M. Helvey, an American sailor, confessed to stomping to death Allen Schindler, a homosexual shipmate. He later on apologized at the court-martial for brutally beating Schindler: "I can't apologize enough for my actions. I am not trying to make any excuses for what happened that night. It was horrible, but I am not a horrible person."

Plato's Apology of Socrates was a self-defense of someone "who corrupted the young, refused to worship the gods, and created new deities". And that would have been a very effective apology, if it was sincere. But, was Socrates sorry for not worshiping the gods? I really doubt that. Socrates apology helped him have the last word in an argument he won on the long term, but momentarily lost along with his life.

So what makes an apology effective enough to make us forgive such deeds? Some studies claim that an effective apology should imply an understanding of the offence, assuming responsibility, acknowledging the pain you created, self-judging the offence you did, showing remorse, and intentions.

Interestingly enough, the word apology derives from the Greek apologia meaning 'a speaking in defense'.  The word defense itself can be: a) an euphemism for war or the military, b) a psychological defense mechanism, c) survival techniques against large predators and d) a pleading practice defined to be the denial of the truth or validity of the complaint, and which does not signify a justification.

The bottom line is that, apologies basically mean the act of defending against attack, danger, or injury. When we apologize we rather downplay a new and potential debate/conflict/quarrel. In the animal world, a male monkey that upset the alpha male of the group, apologizes by bending over and showing his bottom in order to divert the alpha male’s aggression and covert it into sexual energy. I know a few people that do this regularly.

Since childhood we are inculcated a set of norms which are supposed to help us fit better. Sometimes, these precious social teachings come in handy. Some other times, they just won’t do. The communication process is such a set of norms. Yet, it is outrageously pretentious to claim that this is universally valid. In spite of the multitude of cross cultural studies with yet local findings, some say apologies are the gluing element of broken relations by restoring the trust.

However, apologies don’t matter much. Quantum Physics claims that the act of observing something changes that very thing. Communication is such a two-way observing process which is defined by an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings, gestures (kiss, slap, punch, stab- sure murder is an extreme way of communicating to someone you don’t like them) or ideas towards a mutually accepted goal. Communication, pretty much like death, is irreversible. We can't take anything back: not a word, not a gesture and definitely not a feeling. Something changed within us: an idea, a bunch of thoughts, and a gallon of emotions. Sometimes the process goes wrong and one of the parties feels/is hurt. During communication there are several processes that are enacted and the act of apologizing should re-align the good self of the wrong doer with the person she/he has offended with the violated norm (Goffman, 1973).

When we apologize, we speak in defense of a cause, beliefs or actions, trying to justify (explain, find a reason) for our deeds, thus contradicting the very purpose of the apology, which should be the admittance of an erroneous act. Self-defense doesn’t necessarily imply the admittance of a mistaken, error, crime, and offense. Consequently, apologies have no particular importance but they do carry some meaning.

The underlying reason for an apology is not the remorse itself but the forgiveness part. If you think that “the wronged don't distinguish between coerced apologies and spontaneous ones” why apologize anyway? The wronged one doesn’t make the difference and the wrong doer doesn’t mean it.

Forgiveness comes in as many hues as the degrees of hurt – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual (am not even coming close to how and if we should forgive societal atrocities, murder, wars). For that, no apology is accepted. Germany’s apology for the Holocaust doesn’t even come close to being worthy and it is just a diplomatic trick that is worth pretty much nothing. Well, close to nothing as in 1965, Germany signed a treaty agreeing to pay for the Holocaust victims and has paid out over 63.2 billion Euros -including 1.5 billion Euros in direct payments to the Israeli government.  Yet, can we say Israelis forgave the Germans? I doubt that. No words or money are good enough. Apologies do not really matter when your family is incinerated in an oven.

Now, medically speaking, forgiveness comes with a nice plate of lower blood pressure and heart rate, a better immune system and a longer life, among others. However, when comes to different kind of traumas, forgiveness is a long life process and might not be the most recommended approach. It comes with an assortment of other dishes: reconciliation, confession, repentance, and penalty. Added to recognition and assuming responsibility, plus material payment it might come close to working.

Nonetheless, a premature forgiveness will lead to the opposite outcome. Some say that if done correctly, an apology can heal humiliation and generate forgiveness. And that a successful apology requires empathy and the security and strength to admit fault, failure, and weakness.  So, it is not enough to know how to properly apologize but you also count on the AQ (apology quotient) of the apology receiver.

Anyway, if I err, I apologize.

Natural born unhappy

What erroneous wish have I made when I was seven and blew my birthday cake candles? What evil fairies have I conjured when I closed my eyes and all I asked for was “when I grow up, I want …” What was it that I wished for since I don't seem to be able to find it? Happiness? Why am I constantly wished for and reminded that the most important thing in life is to be happy? What is that? Ignorance? Bliss? Both?

I took a look at my plate and was trying to figure out what was missing, telling myself that since I’ve simplified my life to the maximum, I should have been happier. Naively, I thought simplifying equaled happiness. In my avid quest to obtain an intrinsic happiness and ultimately to reach to its core, I have been trying to deplete life of its futile layers. Yes, life has lots of snakes that are only ropes hidden in shady corners, at the end of the day.

I divided things that fill everyone’s life into categories. I made my own “vital shopping list”:
1) earthly things (monkey business ones) and 2) heavenly things (the ones that make the world go ‘round with a little bit of help from intrinsic angular momentum).

With these distinct categories in mind, I thought that if I managed to keep my balance between the two of them, it would be impossible to lose myself and I’d always stay grounded. However, even if it seemed to work for while, I realized I cannot define myself as happy and my irremediable cynicism kept me at bay. Something was missing. Simplifying didn’t help. Epicurus was wrong. Avoiding pain does not equal happiness.

Naturally, I came to realize that my happiness was directly proportional to the level of expectation, so I genuinely yet erroneously thought that simplification was the right solution that needed to be applied. Normally, Occam ’s razor came to my mind: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity). Well, not exactly in Latin but you know what I have in mind. Meaning, when things tend to complicate, the simplest solution is the truest one. The simplest solution is the truest one. The simplest.

Since I have simplified my life but still felt an indefinable emptiness, I tended to agree that there must be my faulty Romanian genes and the implacability of destiny that we seem to be slaves to. Moirae's slaves. Or, maybe it was just me, who thought I have free-will so it was my responsibility to find happiness.

I enviously looked at my Northern American friends, who claimed to be happy, walked their Golden Retrievers, played their saxophone, wrote their books, raised their children and claimed were naturally high on dopamine and serotonine. Maybe their water is different.

Yet, 10% of the adult Americans had experienced at least one major depressive episode during the last year. Moreover, N.I.H.  provided a list of mental health statistics:  "An estimated 26.2% of Americans ages 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year." (MedlinePlus). Yippee kay ay, it was not me!

The New Scientist magazine published a survey covering 65 countries, claiming that Finland was the happiest and the least-corrupt nation in the world. Should it be any relation between the moral cleanliness and happiness? Apparently.

Americans put a price on personal success, pride and self-esteem and ranked topmost. But were not exactly happy. So what makes a person happy? According to the same poll, people checked these factors as contributing to their state of happiness: genetic propensity, marriage, make friends and value them, desire less, do someone a good turn, have faith (religious or not), stop comparing your looks with others, earn more money, grow old gracefully, don't worry if you're not a genius. The Japanese said that living up to family and society expectations constituted happiness. But then again, they coined the term of hikikomori. There is something to think about, isn't it? What if you were happy but you didn't know it? Is happiness generally valid? It seems not. Whatever makes Nigerians happy, does not make me happy.

Books say that in case of uncertainty, the expectation is considered likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment. If something unexpected happens, that is a surprise. Synonyms: anticipation, hope, expectancy, belief, prospect, probability, suspense, bated breath.

Hold on, hold on. Go back on the line: to change your happiness, change your expectation. Damn, I have been expecting an unrealistic goal all along. I craved for an intrinsic and genuine happiness, its very concentrated essence, while I should have craved for something more attainable, like a fancy car, a smaller butt, or a filthy rich husband. I didn’t find it, as I was searching for the wrong thing. When you are not looking for it, it is easy to miss it.

Thus my next step in battling a natural born philosophical dissatisfaction was to change my expectations, in order to lure this moody and permanently PMSing woman vaguely called “happiness”. Maybe I should then settle. Isn’t this how is called when people lower and change their expectations?

According to Merriam Webster, to settle means to seat, to bring to rest, to place as, to furnish with inhabitants, to colonize, to make quiet or orderly, to establish permanently. In legal terms, it means to come to a decision, to conclude a lawsuit by agreement of a court.

Since “to settle” has so many wonderful synonymous meanings, I allowed myself picking one, according to my taste and prerogative: to bring to rest. Thus, to settle means to bring to rest. Logically, let’s reiterate and include the newly found data and write down the syllogism.
1) To be happy means to lower or change your expectations;
2) To lower your expectation means to settle;
3) To settle means to bring to rest or conclude.

Voila, QED: to become happy, means to bring to rest.

Our unhappiness resulted from the fact that all along, we inversed the natural order of things: we wanted peace of mind in order to become happy. While the correct order would be: we need to be happy in order to obtain peace of mind. But you cannot possibly be happy if you are looking for happiness in the wrong places.
Yet.

Life is nothing but an emotional roller coaster and we live for the thrill of the ups and downs of the journey. Median lukewarm relations don’t make us exalt, and the force of habit and routine acts manage to strangle any glimpse of passion, leaving us with residual emotions and fake sensations. Happiness is a state that doesn’t inspire most of us, regardless of what (some) psychologists say about the creativity of love.

Happiness, unlike love which is an innate idea, is an acquired concept. No, they are not related. We are naturally born unhappy and we should love every minute of it. Unhappiness like any other human emotional value should be encouraged to surface.

I am not talking about Merriam Websterish sort of unhappiness as a state of not well-being, deep grief or discontent or a feeling or spell of dismally low spirits. I am talking about the unhappiness that any thinking and rationalizing being encounters when she inevitable reaches certain inferences about life and its themes. It is almost impossible not delve deep into unhappiness once you come to terms with the depths of life, its meaning, and its teleological scope.

So what is happiness? A cumulus of daily joys? The gathering of “small things”? Is it even definable? What are the "small things"? Nah, that is too simple. Is there a happiness center in the brain? Are psychologists simplistically true? Is this all we want: to avoid pain, and thus the pharmaceutical companies will flourish? Is ignorance bliss, indeed?

Unhappiness is natural and its bearer should not be ostracized towards the extreme side of the emotional palette. Unhappiness is the realistic inspiration and aspiration of grown ups, the courage to admit that happiness is a brief touch of this perfunctory, gregarious and temporarily state that inflicts a false sensation that life is like this at all times.

It is only human to desire and aspire to happiness but the sooner we come to terms with it and embrace our unhappiness, the better.

We need the terra firma of unhappiness back. We need to clear the emotional debris , the “we are told-s”, and break the dam of emotions free. Allow yourself to be sad. Let the river of unhappiness run boundless. Free yourself. Be unhappy.

Panem et circenses

Across the ocean, in the USA, a judge ruled that The National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. Judge Barbara Crabb motivated her decision by saying that “In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray”.

The same day, across the other side of the world (literarily) two Romanian MPs have proposed a National Day of Prayer based on other reasons than religious. Senator Gheorghe David and Mircea Lubanovici have asked for the amendment of the Labor Code, in order to fit the new proposal. Obviously, having a day off in order to pray for more money from I.M.F., decrease of the national debt, unemployment skyrocketing rate seems like a reasonable thing to do. Only a super natural power might save this country from disaster and generalized corruption.

We are not here to discuss the benefits of the prayer itself, as regardless of religion many think that some sort of organized incantation or invocation of a supreme power can be uplifting and increase morale (subject expectancy effect). Yet, this should not be done nationally and supported legally and each individual should be theoretically free to choose the time and place to do it.

Although a day off is nice and the procrastinator in me would normally welcome it, I am, however, too outraged to let this one go. The folk wisdom says, if you are not outraged you are not paying enough attention. So here is the deal. The new legal proposal basically relies on the same anti-constitutionality framework that made the American judge declare it as unconstitutional (please see Article 9, Law 489/2006 which states that “There is no state religion in Romania; the State is therefore neutral of any religious belief or atheistic ideology; 2) The Cults are equal before the law and the public authorities. The State and its authorities will not promote or favor or create discriminations towards any particular cult.

So, what is particularly wrong with this proposal let aside it is anti-legal? Well, for starters the prayer itself is the expression of a religious belief, and the religious belief is a personal choice. To offer a national day off would show clear favor to a religious majority. If that is the case, then it should equally be offered the opportunities for days off like:  the Coca Cola Abstinence Day, The Non Spitting on the Sidewalk Day, The Picking the Feces after your Dog Day, Mourning Day when the soccer team loses, Grape Picking Day, and Non-Thinking Day. Similarly, there should be a day off to celebrate a Free-Thinking Day, in which people should not pray based on the same egalitarian principles of state neutrality.

Let us be clear about it. The believers in Romania should be and are free to go to any church of choice as long as they do that in their spare time, not interfering with other people’s beliefs or non-beliefs for a fact.

This is not an anti-religious plea or even a secular versus religious debate as their dispute stopped being a dialog about primum casus, fallacies, and fissures in both theories and became a generalized ad hominem venomous stoning in the agora.

This is not a debate about god or church. This is a debate about freedom.

If you disagree with the project, you can personally email Gheorghe David and Mircea Lubanovici:
gheorghe.david@senat.ro si mircea.lubanovici@cdep.ro

Not all women are dumb, but all men are men

The debate
The boob liberty parade started long controversies that gathered around the debating table modern philosophers, real doctors or just PhDs, religious people, ethic and moral experts, outraged feminists and men with an obvious Freudian fixation.

Although regarded by many as a sign of promiscuity and libertinage, topless sunbathing was eased into the modern culture by a misunderstood feminism brought to extremes. Some advance even the idea that is good for your breasts to be tanned. That would be true if overall tanning would be beneficial for the health. However, medical researches claim that from the moment when topless tanning became popular breast cancer  rate increased.

I am not here to point fingers or to make the apologetic of naked bodies, as we all know what a convoluted and controversial concept that is. Some say that even if the 60’s frenzy is gone, the perils of this earth-shattering period are still present and leading to a mass fury of boob flashing. Most topless addicts claim that partial or total nudity is a symbol of a newly gained freedom, while more prude and cautious critics state that, in fact, the loss of shame equals to loss of civilization. We started naked some 60,000,000 years ago and we end up naked. What is the benefit of development and civilization if we return to the rudiments of our censorless behavior?

Reductio ad ridiculum
Is lack of "shame" a sign of civilization? Moreover, should nudity coincide with being ashamed? What did we gain and what did we lose in the process of evolution? Is covering up a sign of modernism? Are clothes or their lack off a standard of civilization? Well, for starters, the lack of clothes is not a symbol of civilization, and aborigines in various corners of the world stand as living proof. Similarly, the excessive cloth covering is also not a representation of the level of civilization, modernity or emancipation (just consider the Taliban women).

The question that rises is whether shame should be identified with nudity or not. Shame is an emotion, and affect and a condition which is usually defined as a painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous done by oneself or another. Now, if we think of nudity as dishonorable, improper or ridiculous, obviously we will feel ashamed.

The next question in our train of thought is whether nudity is ridiculous or not. What is being ridiculous? In rhetorics and argumentation there is a logical fallacy called reductio ad ridiculum (appeal to ridicule), which presents the interlocutor's argument in a way that appears ridiculous, or laughable about. Example: as the theory of evolution is true, that would mean that all the apes wouldn't be here any more, since they all would have evolved into humans!

Etymologically speaking, the word ridiculous, from Latin ridiculosis (laughter) came to mean by extension, pathetic, scornful and inspiring pity. Now, is human nudity pathetic? Are our new born babies pathetic and ridiculous? Maybe they are but we are too blinded by oxytocin to see that. It should be no exception. We cannot have double standards and appreciate only the infant nudity while rejecting the adult one. A couple of extra pubic hairs shouldn’t make nudity less attractive, au contraire. It all comes down to the value scale of a certain society who gives more importance to nudity than to flogging or beheading.

Those inglorious flogging basterds
You might wonder how can I mix nudity and flogging in the same context. Very simple, really. A society that insinuates that nudity is a crime, will end up flogging an individual for doing so, not thinking that the collective shame of performing a dishonorable deed (such as flogging) of the society itself when expressing a level of civilization, by physically punishing an individual, should be higher than seeing the nudity of that individual. That was a long phrase and I hardly made sense of it. Logically and ethically makes no sense, if we break down the definition of shame vs nudity. The flogging itself diminishes the level of civilization and increases the shame given by the lack off or banning of nudity.

Breast Appreciation Academy
Let me get your attention back, so let’s revert to breasts. The breast itself is not a nice organ to look at, if dissected: it is composed 90% of fat, tissue and some mammary glands. Looked at from the outside, it is a stretch of skin over the same fat and mammary glands, that has a dark, brown, pink areola, with protruding or inverted nipples, pear, melon, cantaloupe, apple or other fruits shaped. Some innovative genuine breast lovers, who seemed to have studied at Breast Appreciation Academy, forward these genial alternative names for the same organs: assets, baps, bazookas, boobs, boobies, cans, hooters, jugs, knockers, rack, tits, titties, bee stings, mosquito bites, puppies, honkers, twins, jublies, gunzagas, milk depot, airbags, bangers, norks, fun bags, tata tots, twin peaks, fun bubbles, boulders, sin cushions, bouncers, bongos, balloons, snuggle pups, bumpers, yummies, udders and my favourite of them all, chesticles.

We cannot go on with our peroration about topless without mentioning that the anatomical functionality of breasts is to mainly feed the offspring. However, what feminists seem to forget is that in order to reach to the offspring feeding part, a woman needs to procreate and she would procreate if she previously had sex, and she would get to have sex if she aroused the male by flashing her boobs. Therefore, we might logically conclude that breasts’ anatomical primary and foremost role is to arouse the man, so the female can insure the perpetuation of the species. Jokingly or not, this assessment is nevertheless true. There are tons of books written about the sociology of breasts, and men’s obsession of this particular body organ. Some women, including me, felt very offended when men declared turned off by the presence of nutrition (milk that is) within the breasts and jumped right up, declaring very Simone de Beauvoirish that breasts, you misogynists and chauvinist pigs, are made to feed our infants and not used to make fast car advertorials and commercials.

"I have a dream"
OK, here is the thing; if an organ whose primordial role is to produce milk manages to sell fast cars and kitchen furniture to men, so much for the better. The overall economy will get better, and us as individuals will live in more decent conditions. Use it for your benefit. Who knows, maybe in time, naked breasts pictures will prevent some economic crisis or even bring world peace. A study actually claimed (who pays for this kind of studies, goddamn it!) that “ten minute ogle at women’s breasts is as healthy as half an hour in the gym”.  Imagine a world full of happy and relaxed men, with no desire to start wars or invade territories, or who go to work to support their wives extravagant standards of living, while driving the car they bought after they stared at a fast-car-naked-boob-subliminal message ad. We all know what popular wisdom is saying “not all women are dumb, but all men are men”.

Altruism, from Yeast to Amnesty International

During Kant’s days, altruism was distinguished from duty and loyalty. It still is today. It comes to no surprise that for evolutionary theorists, altruism is at least biologically impossible, and anyway, even if an organism shows signs of altruism that is well masked selfishness. The evolutionary scientists say that if altruistic organisms emerge, they would lose the competition for survival and they would become extinct. From this point view, this trait is a chimera as there are only two ways that an organism engages in altruistic behavior: help one's own offspring, and/or other close kin. So much for altruism.

Let alone the acute sensation that we are becoming the victims of a fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, the problem is either vaster or in fact, way simpler than we thought it was (once again, Occam’s razor could be applicable - entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity). Now, the problem could become more facile, as soon as we agree on how: 1) we define altruism and 2) if consciousness is required when comes to it. In fact, there might be no problem whatsoever, just various options that, in the end, do not even contradict each other, just complete. However, the rigidness of the biological-evolutionary based view just falls short under the fallacy of the general rule, where all chairs have four legs, failing to bring into discussion the rocking chairs, for instance (I know for a fact that my grandfather had three legged chairs).

For biologists, an organism behaves altruistically if the behavior reduces its own fitness while increasing the fitness of one or more other organisms. From this perspective we can count a few organisms, like yeast, a monocellular organism, which exhibits altruistic behavior. Margaret Jack (2007, Harvard Science Review) showed the origin of a gene for altruism in the budding yeast where each cell secretes the enzyme that is then shared by the whole population.

However, cellular altruism is not always accurate, let alone true. A study made by Sohei Kondo (1998, International Journal of Radiation Biology) claims that cell suicide, programmed death and apoptosis are terms used for the same type of active cell death. Apoptosis is the process of programmed cell death that may occur in multicellular organism and which confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For instance, apoptosis is responsible for killing infected cells, cancerous cells and cells that are in the wrong place during development. C. Gourley (2006, Molecular Microbiology) claimed that apoptosis has been observed as a kind of altruistic suicide in colonies of yeast under stress. In animals, radiation hormesis (the stimulating effect of small doses of substances which in larger doses are inhibitory) results from altruistic cell death and this hypothesis can explain the hormetic effect of low doses of radiation on the immune system in mice. In contrast, in plants, radiation hormesis seems to be mainly due to non-altruistic cell death.

From this perspective, an organism can be altruistic without possessing consciousness. But that is rather simplistic, isn’t it?  However, the generalization from yeast to human psyche is a bit cherry pickinglish, as it rather points at individual cases that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a momentous slice of related cases that may contradict that position.

Now, altruism apparently leads to helping behavior and it is biologically possible for organisms to have the ultimate desires to help their kin, and to help non-kin with whom they engage in reciprocal altruism. Yet, in the case of yeast, the concept of “desire”- the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state- or even “close kin benefit” is out of the question. So, at which point can we transpose the issue of altruism from “biology” to “psychology”? J.P. Rushton (2007) demonstrated that altruism is a heritable trait in a study that showed that identical twins had a higher correlation of altruism than fraternal twins.  Additionally, if aggressiveness, depression and jealousy can be accepted as genetically necessary because it helped humans survive, so can altruism, which ultimately is not simply a socialized behavior based on an individual’s guilt or a masked form of selfishness close kin, but a genetic trait.

C. Sripada (apud John Doris, 2002) has emphasized that the ultimate desire for the welfare of others could spring from another direction than kin selection or reciprocal altruism (you scratch my back, I scratch yours, in a 50% ratio). Similarly, Daniel Batson rather defines altruism as the creation of an emotional response (empathy) to the distress of another person. Some even push the theory further claiming that we help others but not to avoid another person’s distress (imagine when you interfere if you see a woman getting raped) but to avoid your own distress for being a silent witness to such mishap. So ultimately, when a Good Samaritan does interfere to prevent a crime, he does so as a coping mechanism of further personal distress (more so to get the Helper’s High).

In folk mentality, altruism is synonymous to: sympathy, compassion, tenderness, empathy and manages to escape the narrowness of the biological definition, where altruism is just an instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or spread of that individual's genes.

Rather, we would replace it with how it was originally coined by Auguste Comte as amity, compassion, generosity, goodwill, humanity, kindheartedness, kindness, sympathy, beneficence, benevolence, charity, magnanimity, philanthropy, selflessness, self-sacrifice, and unselfishness. Etymologically speaking the word comes from the old French “autrui” meaning “other people” and is an unselfish regard for the welfare of others; and if evolutionists want to prove altruism is another form of selfishness, they might just have to coin a term of their own.

Now, the question that rises is this: do those Amnesty International and Greenpeace volunteers exhibit altruistic behavior to avoid personal distress, to preserve their genes, or they coldly calculate the zero-sum relations before allowing themselves to be killed (see the case of Rainbow Warrior or those who sign letters for Freedom of Speech on behalf other people, who live in countries where this right is banned)? I am aware that is a twisted egoistic possibility, which is rather based on self protection of one’s sensibility rather than the protection of an outsider not at all close to kin.

Now, another aspect of the altruism would be the morality of the deed itself. If I prevent a crime from being done, and I altruistically interfere (not thinking to offspring or next to kin or reciprocity), I might do so out of a self-punishment motivation or a self-reward? So my snap decision is a selfish not wanting to live with the guilt one, which leads to what an outsider might perceive an altruistic action. So what does ultimately give value to altruism: self-perception or the collective perception? In one of the philosophy tales, when speaking of Kant’s morality, it is said that a shopkeeper had the opportunity to give the wrong change to a customer (to cheat on him). Yet, he gives the right change instead. Now, the motivation for which he gave back the right change was the fear that gossip about his manners as a businessman would be spread in the market and he might lose his business. Fearing bankruptcy, he instead acts moral. Now, the value of his act is not moral, as his motivation was not moral. Rather, the shopkeeper gave the right change out of anxiety and self-punishment more than moral inclination.

Morally speaking, a person that commits an altruist fact based on the decision that on a long term they might suffer from remorse, anxiety and regret gives no genuine altruistic value to the deed. In the end, altruism should not only be a talk about gene replicating easiness, close to kin reciprocity, empathy, helper’s high or remorse, even if the organism that shows traits of altruism is metazoan or not. Altruism cannot be brought into discussion, unless we speak of an ulterior motive which has to be intrinsically conscious, so we can make it morally worthy.  Self-awareness is a condition to be entitled to your own merkwelt and the thalamo-cortical physiological support for awareness is not sufficient to call ourselves "aware". If merkwelt involves thoughts, perceptions, emotions and ultimately motivation, it is rather obvious that altruism depends on our particular consciousness, more than our desire to simply perpetuate in a zero-sum exchange system.

You gelotologist!

So what happens when a therapist and a hooker spend the night together? In the morning they both say: "120 dollars, please."

Bored scientists came up with quite a handful of researches which emphasize the importance of humor. Is there a humor center in the brain? What are we laughing about? Why do we appreciate humor? Well, let’s spend some funds and see why we are laughing at Seinfeld’s jokes. Yada yada yada.

Medically speaking, Dean K. Shibata, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, claims that the appreciation of jokes and cartoons is related to the ventromedial frontal lobe, an area with little activity in patients with depression and in which lesions may alter the person’s sense of humor. Now, if you are not laughing while watching Tony Blair bashing atheists as the new terrorist threat within, you just could have a ventromedial frontal lobe issue. Or the man could be a plain idiot.

However, researchers know that a number of brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex (responsible for language processing and memory), are involved in humor appreciation. Shibata advised neurosurgeons to avoid such areas of the brain during surgery. We wouldn’t like a healthy humorless patient, would we? What would be the irony if the patient loses his sense of humor when he sees the bill and sues the hospital? After all, this is why the psychiatrists used to administer shock therapy to the patients: to prepare them for the bill. Get it? If you didn’t, not to worry. Genders seem to respond differently when comes to appreciation of humor.

A study made by Allan Reiss, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, discovered that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a "greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, as they used more analytical machinery when deciphering humorous material". So, in case you ever wanted to know what's the difference between a psychologist and a magician here is the answer: a psychologist pulls habits out of rats!  If you laughed at this joke, you might be a man, or a psychologist. Or both.

Now, anatomically speaking, laughter is caused by the epiglottis constricting the larynx and its study is called gelotology. Consequently a person that dedicates his life to studying laughter is called a gelotologist. If he studies laughter in old people that would make him a gerontologist gelotologist. Now, let’s see what we are laughing about. Contrary to popular belief, we do not laugh about humor only; we laugh at people and mainly how they relate. You don’t need a killer punch line to make someone laugh. “Oh, gee, here’s comes Sarah Palin” might as well do. A successful joke thus depends on several factors: gender, level of education, level of a healthy mind (a damaged brain person might not get it), race and age. Apart from relations we also laugh at slapsticks, common experiences and situations, families, marriages, embarrassing situations and slip-ups, work, idiots, bosses, intellectual snobs and psychologists. Oh, in passing, do you know how many psychologists it takes to change a light-bulb? Just one, but the light-bulb has to want to change.

Chic Murray, a Scottish comedian, thinks we also laugh at guns: I drew a gun. He drew a gun. I drew another gun. Soon we were surrounded by lovely drawings of guns. Billy Connolly doesn’t even tell jokes but he does make a lot of physical manifestations on the behavior. And swearing. Bloody hell. On a poll made by E! Television, Seinfeld was the only comedy series that made the ’90s rule. Seinfeld’s humor has a sort of superficial conflict and characters with odd dispositions, but none with deep emotions. A character’s death (architect and marine biologist wannabe George’s fiancée, Susan) got no genuine emotion of regret from anyone in the show. As Wesley Hurd said, in his Postmodernism: a new model of reality, the characters were “thirty-something singles with no roots, vague identities, and conscious indifference to morals” and that made us laugh for almost ten years.

Evolutionary speaking, Robert Provine, professor at the University of Maryland, believes that laughter evolved from the panting behavior of our ancient primate ancestors. “If we tickle chimps or gorillas, they don’t laugh “ha ha ha” but exhibit a panting sound. That’s the sound of ape laughter. And it’s the root of human laughter. When we laugh, we’re often communicating playful intent. So laughter has a bonding function within individuals in a group. It’s often positive, but it can be negative too. There’s a difference between “laughing with” and “laughing at.” People who laugh at others may be trying to force them to conform or casting them out of the group.”

However, the effectiveness of humor as a communication device remains uncertain as humor has proven to be very elusive, although the attention-attracting ability of humor has also been demonstrated in education research (Powell and Andresen 1985; Zillmann et al. 1980).

Sigmund Freud believed that laughter releases tension and "psychic energy" and it’s basically a coping mechanism and maybe this is why the psychoanalysis is a lot quicker for a man than for a woman. Because when it's time to go back to childhood, a man is already there.

More recent studies claimed that men make women laugh as they want to get them in bed. A laughing woman opens her mouth, exposes her teeth and throat, makes the “hahahaha” sounds, tilts her head back and that by itself is foreplay. But, while women appear to prefer a man who makes them laugh (82% of women consistently rank humor as one of the top 3 qualities of men they want to date) the same does not hold true when the sexes are reversed - and men are not more attracted to funny girls. Humor is a quality that gets women in bed, and which seems to only be appreciated by women, required in men. So yes, it is a no brainer that laughter leads to sex, unless of course the laughter is about sex, at which point the laughter ensures that there will be no more sex. After all, what does a behaviorist tell to another after lovemaking: “Darling, that was wonderful for you. How was it for me?"

Easter knee-jerk reaction

It happened again. Romanian Orthodox Christians (and others around the world) have observed the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God, while devoting themselves to an abundance of red wine, lamb chops, sausages, hard-boiled eggs, shepherd’s pie and more. According to the Romanian Emergency Services, there were 15% more cases of alcoholic coma and food indigestion during the Holy Night than on any regular night. Oh well, alcoholic coma is a way to celebrate faith, right?

We are all aware of people’s need to believe into supernatural agents in order to explain the unknown and uncertain aspects of their lives, rather than search for answers elsewhere, like science. Science is an inconvenient truth. We also acknowledge some people’s need of paternal figure or tooth fairies wish granters, as we all have regression moments. It’s understandable. We also nod in agreement when comes to religion’s role into trading hope and ease off the death anxiety. We even understand when others motivate wars by using religion as leverage. We also try to explain honor killings in the name of god, and psychologists spend million of dollars trying to sort out things in the lab by studying group cohesion, god center in the brain, the benefits of praying, or altruism from a religious perspective.

Unfortunately for us, the secular people, Joseph Bulbulia and Andrew Mahoney, of Wellington University in New Zealand, came up with the Hand Grenade Experiment which concluded, that Christianity can trigger altruistic sacrifice, for whatever reason, for fellow Christians. While the secular did not. Yes, religion does seem to be a powerful tool for generating group cohesion. Similarly, Ali Ahmed at Växjö University in Sweden studied if religious students were more co-operative than the secular students. They were. Religion can, it seems, change behavior, into more positive traits. But this is not a pro-religious piece. Far from it.

It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Christmas and Easter have been converted and transformed into the cheapest and most commercial celebrations on the religious calendar.

What they represent nowadays are the symbols of a pagan and consumerism driven society. Religious or not, we live in an “homo oeconomicus” era. “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s goods” can be translated into “it is economically stimulating and efficient if you do so”.

Religion, pretty much like political appurtenance, is unfortunately an inherited custom that is handed over like a rite of passage from parents to their children. After the 1989 revolution, in an attempt to spite communism, to reject the neo-communists and to feel like we are belonging somewhere in Europe, many people turned once more towards God and Church. But it didn't imply they embraced or turned to an authentic approach to faith.

However, if Christianity doesn’t reshuffle and rethink its dogmas and approach to faith, it will naturally disappear without the “help” of the secular people, in spite of Tony Blair’s gloomy prediction that atheism is the threat within. Andre Scrima, a Romanian theologian who lived at Deir El Harf monastery, Lebanon, between 1968 and 1989 said that “Christianity will have no future if it doesn’t become authentic again, outside the institutions”.  Scrima was right: change can be brought about by evolution or revolution. Christianity has witnessed none.

All systems and organizations are man-made for the benefits of people and are eventually fallible. When they cease to be beneficial or start to become detrimental it's time to think about letting them fade away or actively tossing them out. You cannot move on, if you don’t let go.

About God, with Devil's Advocate (an interview)

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. (Steven Weinberg)

Thanks for playing along, Elie, you make a wonderful Devil’s Advocate.

God’s Advocate (sipping coffee, in a good mood): How are you?

Devil’s Advocate: Am fine. What about you?

God’s Advocate: Good, good. Couldn't be better. I think I found god.

Devil’s Advocate (smile): Where did you find him? Or did he find you? Are you both dating now?

God’s Advocate: Well...let's keep it as a surprise (smile). Yeah, god and I are dating.

Devil’s Advocate: Are you now...So, is he the ONE? How is it going?

God’s Advocate: Well, I talk to him, he ignores me...I think he might be a man, after all.

Devil’s Advocate: Nah, I don't think that, but you got me for a second. A man?

God’s Advocate: A man, or something else. You know, give me ambiguity or give me anything else. Ancient Greeks defined god as an explicative stable principle while everything else is prone to transformation. What we are basically witnessing is the existence of two worlds: a world of senses and one of reason, and god can only be explained through the second one. Which appeals to me more than the Christian doctrine. However, just think of how mundane and naive most people perceive God, as if he is some wish granter. Greeks foresaw the quantum physics principle of permanent change way before it was labeled as such. God is stability, the spine of the world not some angry dude that burns bushes, promises heavens or forgives your sins...For that, we don't need god, we need ourselves because is harder to forgive ourselves....

Devil’s Advocate: Sometimes it makes me wonder if it isn’t us who created God according to our own image and likeness, and not the other way around.

God’s Advocate: Hmm, Hegel did say that the reality is the creation of our own mind. It could be possible.

Devil’s Advocate: It's the need to forgive our own self that we created an image of God that we can repent before. Many things make me think over and over that it's out of our feeling of insecurity that we created God, just a bit more powerful so that we can feel stability. It's like us saying "there is a supreme being taking care of everything, why should we worry?"

God’s Advocate: Couldn't be also a possibility that, ultimately, god is our better selves? I mean, come to think of it, all major monotheistic religions (sister religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism) preach about goodness, and ultimately trying to bring up the best in us, forcing us to become kinder, more moral, more tolerant...Now, how humans distort to their liking these teachings is another story...

Devil’s Advocate: That's what I was trying to say, that we created god and gave him an image eliminating all our flaws.

God’s Advocate: True.

Devil’s Advocate: Just to feel secure and stable.

God’s Advocate: God as an improved version of us. God is us.

Devil’s Advocate: Yes, as we noticed that we f*** up pretty much everything since day one. We needed to feel that there is someone who is controlling all our f*** ups. It also sounds more credible if I come and tell a bunch of people ‘you are not allowed to do that’. They'd not buy it. But if I come and tell them: ‘God told me this is forbidden’, it's more credible. THAT, I understand, the concept of creating God. But what I don't understand is religion. See, when it comes to BS, if there ever was a major BS league, you have to stand in awe of the one and only all time champion of false promises and exaggeration - that is Religion.

God’s Advocate: Well, religion was rather a state doctrine. Think of the dark ages when Church or religious institutions simply made the rule. Even kings were submissive to their power. I reckon they came as a natural request to control masses with the threat of a higher power, unexplainable to the ordinary and uneducated people. Believe and seek no more. But this particular approach made God a disservice as it pushed people away from Him as eventually they identified Him with the religious institutions.

Devil’s Advocate: Religion by far is the greatest BS story that has ever been told. It actually convinced people that there's an invisible man, living in the skies, watching every thing you do, that he has a list of ten things that he does not want you to do, and if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and torture where he will send you to live, suffer, burn, choke, scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time...But, He loves you. Does He? Then why the punishment? And if you look at what's going on around you…

God’s Advocate (cutting in): That is the simplistic approach.

Devil’s Advocate: War, diseases, death, famine, poverty, filth, hunger.

God’s Advocate: Also beauty, kindness, tolerance, compassion plus our choice to fix things. But we don't.

Devil’s Advocate: (going on): Destruction!

God’s Advocate: So why blame God? It is not God that created weapons. He gave us the intelligence, now how we use it is our choice...

Devil’s Advocate: If it's true what you're saying, then this is not good work, this is not even close to good work. Why create a creature who can lead to all this? If this is the best god can do, I am not impressed. Results like these don’t belong on a resume of a supreme being.

God’s Advocate: Well, if he created humans -apparently perfect- and then he offered us the choice...Let's say he was not a strict god...

Devil’s Advocate: Dear, in any decently run universe, this guy would have been out of powers a long time ago. I said this "guy", cause I believe, that no woman can mess up things this way.

God’s Advocate: So your bottom line is: god exists but he is far from being perfect?!

Devil’s Advocate: …that and he's a guy not a woman (smiles).

God’s Advocate: Must he have a gender?

Devil’s Advocate: Everything has a gender, apart from those microscopic bacteria.

God’s Advocate: Can't he be just like Q from Star Trek, an omnipresent and omnipotent entity?

Devil’s Advocate (shaking his head categorically): No, no. He's a guy.

God’s Advocate (smirks): So god must have a gender, attributes and is full of defects. We transform him into a human. Why bring him down from the pedestal?

Devil’s Advocate: Look at the results again and you can be sure he's a guy and there are things that do not match. You see, how many prayers are raised? Millions and trillions, right? When do they happen most?

God’s Advocate (cutting in): We are supposed to aspire to reach to him, not bring him down...

Devil’s Advocate (going on undisturbed): On Sunday, right? His day off?

God’s Advocate (mumbling upset): This is the major problem humans have: they want to destroy, demolish, bring down governments but they hardly think of a replacement. Well his day off was on Saturday. He started working on Sunday, according to religious scripts. How we take days off, it’s a matter of business calendar and how churches decided to calculate the Gregorian days.

Devil’s Advocate (smiles): OK, then it's fine. They can keep on praying on Sundays and asking: give me this and give me that, I want a new car, a better job, help here, help me there…

God’s Advocate: Make me slim or make my friends fat…

Devil’s Advocate: Yeah! But I say “fine, pray for whatever you want, anytime you want, but what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan?

God’s Advocate: Where do the Prada shoes I prayed for fit with the divine plan? Sorry, what are you talking about?

Devil’s Advocate: Long time ago, he made a divine plan. He gave it a lot of thinking and decided it was perfect, right? And then he put it into action for billion and billion of years.
Now you come along and pray for something. Suppose the thing you want isn't in his divine plan, like the Prada shoes. What do you want him to do then? To change his divine plan? Isn't that arrogance?!!

God’s Advocate: No, it is a wrongful perception people have of this divinity concept. As I said, most believe god is some golden fish or Aladdin’s lamp. The divine plan itself is a human invention. God has no plan. He simply is.

Devil’s Advocate: It's a DIVINE plan!! What is the use of being supreme, if every a**hole can come and f*** up your plan?

God’s Advocate: Now, how he rapports himself to us and why we keep on believing in his existence is a different story altogether.

Devil’s Advocate: See, that's what I am saying, I am talking about religion and how it can win in any league of bull***. Things just do not match.

God’s Advocate: Maybe there is this higher power, something beyond our power of comprehension. It doesn't mean he is the one we think he is. He might as well not give a rat's a** on us and we came up with divine planning, free-will, praying and Ten Commandments so we feel free or to actually prevent from killing each other!

Devil’s Advocate: I am not saying how I see god here, I am saying how religion sees god and what they teach and preach us. And things do not match so it makes one wonder!

God’s Advocate: So your personal problem is with religion not god. I thought you trash god for f*** ups…

Devil’s Advocate: And then when your prayers are not answered, they'd tell you, it's fine "thy will be done", it's god's will…fine, so if it's god's will and god is going to do whatever he wants to anyway, why bother praying?!

God’s Advocate: Cause it soothes the soul! As god is not a perfect being. He is a necessary being. We need him!

Devil’s Advocate (ironic): Yeah? What about angels then?

God’s Advocate: No genies and angels talk, please. No fairies, either. Let's resume to the concept of god as the ultimate power or our better improved self of our creation to help us deal with our darkest hours.

Devil’s Advocate: Many people claim seeing angels.

God’s Advocate: No Mohammed, Jesus or Abraham talks either. We are talking GOD.

Devil’s Advocate: It's all related, isn't it?

God’s Advocate: They are deluding, and if reality is our creation, they might as well claim they see mother Theresa naked and believe it. For them that is the truth.

Devil’s Advocate (sarcastically): I think angels are psychotic flashbacks for all drugs smoked, swallowed, shot, and/or absorbed rectally since day one until now.

God’s Advocate (couldn’t help, burst laughing): That is angel dust, alright. Powerful drug I might say and also Faith No More's most famous album. Angel dust, faith no more, they are all related, aren’t they? Well maybe we need certain chemical additives to access some corners of our mind. What if god is after all an innate idea, but we cannot reach it unless we trigger some stimuli? What if drugs indeed allow us to access that forgotten god given area within us that in a conscious state we can’t access?

Devil’s Advocate: Then why church is against drugs? Plus it's like making god against nature.

God’s Advocate: Again, Devil’s Advocate, resume to god, forget about Church, Mosque or Synagogue.

Devil’s Advocate: Ah, OK. So you want me to only talk about god today. What else should I not be talking about? And what should I be talking about tomorrow?

God’s Advocate: About the gender of bacteria. I find this subject most fascinating...(smiles).

Devil’s Advocate: It's just that I have so much rage inside against church. God is not a problem. I think I defined my relationship with whatever god might be and if he exists, I think he's okay about it.

God’s Advocate (smiles).

Devil’s Advocate: I am not in a hurry to define what god is.

God’s Advocate: Why do you rage against church? You are a wise man.

Devil’s Advocate: I think if he wanted me to know what or who he is, he would have told me already. But keeping it as mystery sounds more like a riddle for mankind to have fun trying to solve.

God’s Advocate: Sometimes is the ride that matters, not the destination. It is the destination so living life itself is a quest, a riddle. What is wrong with that?

Devil’s Advocate: Well if there is a ride and a destination, then I guess the ride is my life here on earth and what I do. The destination is unknown and it may or may not depend on the way I am taking this ride. How long am I going to live? One day? 40 years? 60 years? 70 years? I am going to find out. For now, I am enjoying the ride, living by my Two Commandments, not Ten!

God’s Advocate (smiles): Which are?

Devil’s Advocate: I guess if there is a god, - and he should be reading what I am telling you now- he should be satisfied by my Two commandments instead of his Ten.

God’s Advocate: He knows before you speak. Reading is a human concept. Reading is not his attribute since he is an incorporeal being. He doesn’t have eyes, he is a presence. Not touchable...

Devil’s Advocate: Yeah, but he should be reading to cross check, no?

God’s Advocate: What are those commandments, you wise one? As he even knows what you are going to say next, but I don’t, so enlighten me.

Devil’s Advocate: Or is he too self confident to read? So his presence doesn’t need to cross check things he already knows?

God’s Advocate: No, cause cross checking involves doubt. Doubt is human and, I might say, an element of faith....

Devil’s Advocate: I know he's not keeping up with all these technologies, but let's say his presence should commute with what I am saying now.

God’s Advocate: What are those two commandments? My patience is running thin. I am only a human being full of defects as created from Adam's rib.

Devil’s Advocate: Thou shalt always be honest and Thou shalt do no harm.

God’s Advocate: Honesty is over rated. It brings you nowhere and sometimes can created discomfort to the bearer.

Devil’s Advocate: Let me take the Ten Commandments and show you how they can be shrunk into these two: honest towards yourself- know what you want, and do it, and know what you don’t want and never do it! Never let your sense of morals stand in your way of doing what you think is right. I can elaborate more on honesty and if you ask me the list was inflated to become Ten. Do you know why?

God’s Advocate: No, but I have the feeling that your answer will imminently follow. Do tell.

Devil’s Advocate: Because Ten sounds more official. You never heard of Top Nine or Top Eleven. The Ten Commandments were a marketing decision, just to sell better and they knew people are going to believe them this way, because most people believe what they are told and roll over on command. They actually made people believe that god gave them this list up on a mountain when no one was around! Do you know the Ten Commandments? I almost forgot them.

God’s Advocate: So you think without these commandments, humans couldn't be moral? Do we need a law to prevent us from harming or being honest? Don’t we have that inside us? Because if this is the case, it means that only those that abide by those commandments are moral people, and all the atheists or agnostic are morally loose or immoral.

Devil’s Advocate: Let me check them on Google but no, this is not what I am saying. Again, I am speaking about religion, they needed to control people and put them inline so they came up with this list. True, it's inside us all. Atheists have those morals as well but since believers and atheists have also a dark side, religious people decided to control things and hence came up with the Ten Commandments, to basically inoculate fear within people and made it more credible by giving it number Ten and saying that GOD gave it to them. OK, wait I found them. Let me go through each, OK?

God’s Advocate: Please, recite them to me...

Devil’s Advocate: I will use the Roman Catholic ones.

God’s Advocate: I guess they are all the same, aren’t they?

Devil’s Advocate: No, on Wikipedia, you can see like 4 lists or even more. Anyway,
I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME,
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN, and
THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH.

God’s Advocate: OK.

Devil’s Advocate: Spooky words, just to put fear.

God’s Advocate: They are not spooky, it is Middle English (smiles).

Devil’s Advocate: …and to prepare people to accept what's next.

God’s Advocate: this is why they are called COMMANDMENTS! They must be imperative, God is not asking nicely, he commands.

Devil’s Advocate: It's not god. It's the religious people who claimed god gave it to them.

God’s Advocate: The Ten Commandments are originating from the Old Testament (The Talmud) which is the Holy Book of Jews, and they have a different perception of god: a tit for tat, revengeful one, closer to the dark human nature. If you notice, the Orthodox Church, later on, softened the tone.

Devil’s Advocate (undisturbed): So they decided that those spooky words, if they start the list with them, they will make it easier for people to believe and get scared and ready to abide.

God’s Advocate: OK, how do you make the masses listen to you? By asking nicely? You need an enlightened despot. Doing good by force for those who don’t know what is good for them. God is like a parent who gently spank us to prevent us from putting our hand in the fire.

Devil’s Advocate: Yeah, it's when Moses went to the mountain when no ones was around to make sure, and he came back with the Talmud. Please!

God’s Advocate: If you need to install by force "do not kill" and claim you are backed up by a higher power, so be it. At those times people killed each other with great ease.

Devil’s Advocate: They still do, darling.

God’s Advocate: The value of life and its priorities was different, as the perception of after life was different.

Devil’s Advocate: It's not by using force and spooky words that you can erase the dark side of human nature. Again, I am telling you how the list was inflated to become Ten. You are not listening.

God’s Advocate: But humans after all are trainable...

Devil’s Advocate: We don’t need these scriptures of Ten Commandments to know what to do and what not to do. See, for instance, HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER. We spoke about that you and I, remember?

God’s Advocate: Right now, we don't need them. But at those times they did need them. We just need to update those commandments.

Devil’s Advocate: It’s about obedience and putting people inline, when I think that obedience and respect and honoring is not automatic and based on father and mother's performance. It is earned! You said it yourself! Even mothers need to earn their respect!

God’s Advocate (stubbornly): As I said, life was not valued before and according to the religious orientation some even perceived it as attaining immortality through human sacrifice. So they had to come up with an imperative request and a punishment to stop the killings. We were savages!

Devil’s Advocate: So because people were savages they said that each should honor their parents? It's not automatic. It should have been earned, even back then.

God’s Advocate: I had in mind "thou shalt not kill" but you didn’t stop to let me cut in.

Devil’s Advocate: We will come to it. It is there somewhere on the list. Plus, remember. What was my Second Commandment? And why I am saying that Moses should have come with only those Two Commandments in his pocket instead?

God’s Advocate (ironically): Do no harm, master (smiles).

Devil’s Advocate: So, do no harm means everything. See, the first Four are to be thrown away, right off the bet. Going on: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL and THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS. Again: stealing is harming. Stealing and lying means dishonesty, so you don’t really need to say the same thing. We can say: thou shalt be honest instead, right?

God’s Advocate (humble): Yes, go on.

Devil’s Advocate: THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE. It means thou shalt do no harm.

God’s Advocate (cutting in): …or give in to lust. It means raise yourself above your animalistic level.

Devil’s Advocate: Giving in to lust leads to harm.

God’s Advocate: Well, not necessarily. It depends what you are lusting on...

Devil’s Advocate: Then it's fine as long as there is no harm.

God’s Advocate (smiles).

Devil’s Advocate: True. So just put it this way, ‘do no harm’, cause if a man is fantasizing over his neighbor’s wife while waxing his carrot, there is no harm. He's fine by coveting his neighbor's wife as long as he doesn’t harm his neighbor. However, if he's coveting her while waxing his carrot, I don’t see any problem with that, as long as it does not develop into causing harm.

God’s Advocate (laughing). True.

Devil’s Advocate (triumphantly): So we're back to "do no harm".

God’s Advocate: In this particular case, true.

Devil’s Advocate: Moving on. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S GOODS. This one is funny, as long as it doesn’t lead to stealing equaling to doing harm, then it should be fine. Otherwise what's going to keep the market going? Coveting your neighbor's goods is what makes the economy going. Your neighbor gets a vibrator that sings, you want to get one, too. It creates jobs and opportunities actually, so as long as you're not harming your neighbor while coveting his goods, you're fine. Hence we are referring again to the "do no harm" commandment.

God’s Advocate: It is actually also about suppressing greed. As I said: I perceive these commandments rather as forceful laws to improve ourselves morally by self-restraint
because lust and greed are basic human and natural inclinations. Now, by restraining them, it raises you morally, thus bringing you closer to the perfectly moral god.

Devil’s Advocate: What harm is there if you have greed inside that won't develop into harming someone? That’s what I am saying; feeling greedy to have something that others have is ‘no harm’, but when you act on it like killing your neighbor to have what he has, then it's a problem. On the contrary, being greedy may be good when it pushes you to work your ass off to have what he has. Greediness is economically stimulating.

God’s Advocate: There is no harm in ‘being greedy’, it is just not morally righteous and the commandments are about this.

Devil’s Advocate: Aren’t you also lifted up when you work hard to reach your target?
Why isn’t normal? You’re mixing things up, darling. Being greedy alone does not equal to being immorally greedy. For instance, you want bigger boobs, now that's being greedy, but killing Scarlett Johansson to have her boobs transplanted from her to you, that's being immorally greedy.

God’s Advocate (annoyed): I think you mix up being needy with being greedy. No, greed is not ok. And my boobs are just fine, thank you.

God’s Advocate: Wanting and achieving more is one thing. But greed takes you a step further as in trying to achieve that aim at any cost, which makes you immoral. Killing is not greed, killing is simply wrong. The fact that I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I mix up things.

Devil’s Advocate: But it's greed that pushed you to kill! So "do no harm" comes in place.

God’s Advocate: I just don’t agree.

Devil’s Advocate: OK, listen. Do whatever you want, think and feel whatever you want, but just do no harm. Doesn’t it make it for you? For human kind? I am going to go along with you, for the sake of debating, although you are an unchallenging opponent. You said that greediness pushes you to make something at any cost, right? Meaning hurting someone and causing harm, right? So instead of saying ‘don’t covet your neighbor's good’ just refer to ‘do no harm’ and it will be fine. Then you can think, ‘fine, my neighbor has that dildo and I want it but i am going to buy one and I won’t have hers at any cost. Instead, I am going to do it morally because doing it immorally may lead to harming someone.

God’s Advocate: Well. It is a bigger umbrella that covers what you are saying, but sometimes you need to go into specifics so you leave no room for speculations. Someone might think that having sex with the neighbor’s wife is no harm: the neighbor doesn’t know (and what you don’t know, cannot harm you), the wife enjoys it and so do you. Now, where is the harm? No where. So going down to specifics ‘harm’ means: lust, greed, killing, and honoring. It is important to specify which kind of harm. It is too generic and vague to say "do not harm".

Devil’s Advocate (condescending): I am not sure if you're hearing what I am saying or whether you're following my algorithm.

God’s Advocate (slightly annoyed): I am trying to answer when you are asking something but I am not sure you want my answers or are just rhetoric questions.

Devil’s Advocate: Hold on, hold on.

God’s Advocate: I am following you through and through.

Devil’s Advocate (imperative): What is my second commandment?

God’s Advocate: Go on, Devil’s Advocate.

Devil’s Advocate (persistent): What is my second commandment?

God’s Advocate: Just go on, already!

Devil’s Advocate (raising voice): What is it? I said I have Two. First is do no harm and the second?

God’s Advocate: Devil’s Advocate, stop being childish. This is not religion class. Make your point, if you have any, and move on. I am waiting for you to see where you want to get.

Devil’s Advocate: Childish? I am arguing with you for Pete’s sake! Childish? If I am asking you something does it mean I am being childish?

God’s Advocate: You insisted that I repeated what you said. I find that rather, ahem, childish. What do you want to prove? That I don’t hear you out? Just go on.

Devil’s Advocate: No, it's not that I wanted to prove that you don’t hear me out. It’s to reach a point because you said "someone might think that having sex with the neighbor’s wife is not harm if the neighbor doesn’t know". So I was saying that when you combine ‘do no harm’ with ‘be honest’, there is no way for that to happen, and you will know that by being dishonest you are violating number Two. By the way, thanks!

God’s Advocate (raising an eyebrow): Whatever for? In case you are not being ironic?

Devil’s Advocate (venting out): Phew, childish!! It's my way to discuss, by asking someone about something to bring them to my point. If you see it childish, then thanks for pointing it out to me.

God’s Advocate (placatory): You are being defensive now. The way you asked repeatedly "what is my second commandment, what is my second commandment, what is it" I find it childish. Cause you wanted to make a point and you suddenly stumbled upon my response....

Devil’s Advocate (angry): I asked you a question, it would have been nice if you answered. If you find what I am saying silly or stupid, don’t wait for me to finish and urge me to finish by saying ‘go on’. Stop me right away and say you're not interested!

God’s Advocate: FYI, you had my full and undivided attention and I apologize for the childish comment. It was uncalled for.

Devil’s Advocate: If someone isn’t listening to what I am saying, should I oblige them to, by embarrassing myself and sound like a child? It's just my way to debate and to make a point. Any point even if it's stupid one. Is that bad? Or even childish?

God’s Advocate: OK, I appreciate your honesty and your input, as always. But with all due respect, I will not give in to your latest remarks. IMHO, I find them defensive and I think we are on a verge of becoming very touchy. I have already apologized. If this doesn't make it better, I am sorry; I don't know what else to say.

God’s Advocate (after a few moments of silence): Do you want to wrap this up? I mean the god conversation? Is there any point you want to make apart from the ones you made already?

Devil’s Advocate (frowning and reluctant): What do you mean?

God’s Advocate: I think we got interrupted by our small misunderstanding and we didn’t finish.

Devil’s Advocate: Oh, OK. Cause your way of asking seemed more like ‘is there other childish point you want to make ’?

God’s Advocate: No….

Devil’s Advocate (deflated): There was the last commandment, about killing ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Besides that, religion had no problem with murder whatsoever. Many people were killed in the name of god. The Crusades and World Trade Center are the most relevant examples.

God’s Advocate (nodding sadly): True.

Devil’s Advocate: And the more devoted they are to religion, the more murdering is negotiable to them. I can refer this last commandment to "do no harm to others" even if the others pray to a different invisible man.

God’s Advocate: No comment. I agree.

Devil’s Advocate: So it's either I am childish or you actually have no comment?

God’s Advocate: Why are you assuming?

Devil’s Advocate: Yeah, sadly assumption is the mother of all f*** ups.

God’s Advocate: It just happens to agree with you and I don’t insist on having the last word. Not now. But before I leave: do you believe in God? Let alone your beliefs about commandments and church.

Devil’s Advocate (pause): Yes, in my own God.

God’s Advocate (curious): What is your own god?

Reporter’s note: Unfortunately, The Devil’s Advocate didn’t answer this question, and since the spirits were highly inflamed, they brought the interview to a natural end, leaving, as so many unanswered questions, the response floating somewhere in the universe.