Uncertain Behavioural Adaptations

UNCERTAIN BEHAVIOURAL ADAPTATIONS

Lakshay Raja

The effects of a rigid character development in any fiction are immensely impactful on viewers, primarily for the fact that the concrete personality traits associated with a character leaves a far wider margin for the audience to judge the person in the true sense. Amongst the other tools used to disclose a scene, such as the familiarity with the location, situation or environment, it is astonishing to realise the impact of such rigidity in characters that makes a situation once absolutely unknown, look agreeable enough for the story to immediately proceed.

Any form of story telling is restricted with a time frame, leaving a slight margin for the characters to deviate from the traits assigned. Any major deviation, consequently, demands an explanation, as often seen in  thrillers, where say, an otherwise seemingly rational-minded character necessarily needs to explain his irrational or psychopathic action — for instance, a murder — before the story could end. The need to offer a familiarity with the characters in a limited time thus comes at the price of the characters being bound under their developed traits. 

The inability of a person in actuality to adapt to a rigid personality, as often dreamt of after watching a movie or observing its character(s) is for the obvious fact that the life is lived through a dynamic and unprepared environment, unlike the characters, who, for instance, once being introduced are unaffected by the adaptive behaviours of the others around, in terms of the expressions, tone, pronunciation or walk, if not demanded by the story. However insignificant such factors look, they explain the power that an environment holds in breaking the barriers of one’s rigidity. 

The impact of mass media and the concreteness in characters that it offers has exceeded to an extent to ironically eliminate the probability of much rigid personalities existing in actuality, —as it seems — with exceedingly influenced, impacted and confused young minds often recognising themselves with an uncertainty; no wonder the ambivert exceeds as a dominant trait. Behavioural adaptations in youth probably have never before been dynamic to an extent that a  merely relatable situation of someone on social media seemingly becomes the base of one’s introspection. 

The impact of being recognised with a certainty by the ones around you on the other hand is just as it is on the audience - pleasant, yet powerful; however the personality then be, submissive or overpowering, for it is these certain traits — flashing in the moments shared with the other people — that in true sense define you. What are you being recognised as lately? Is that you?

The Correct Arrangement

THE CORRECT ARRANGEMENT

(Lakshay Raja)

A sane human mind shall acquire a uniform knowledge and understanding of the world around him, despite him being under any environment and circumstances. The one in a dark prison cell concludes equally in a period of time as the one working with the best minds. Thoughts, however discrete are information, be it in our standards, bizarre - ‘Imagining the origin of each mark on a prison wall’ or scientific and useful - ‘Understanding the infant universe, right after the big bang’. It is our interest in different affairs that leaves most of them still incomplete and questionable, with a gap, the religion claims to fill. A revenge over something demands an equal science as in a ‘moon landing’.

Seven wise men might plant some ‘wisdom’ (in our code of behaviour) to a ‘dull’ mind, yet the two of them would try, the two would shrug off and the rest would leave it to an unexplained phenomenon. The impact of the behaviour of the seven wise men on the dull mind shall always be same, despite the men reacting in any arrangement, though only one of it would leave no space to imperfection (again, in our code of behaviour). The point being, the science of each phenomenon or behaviour or a disease seems understandable in a right arrangement of thinking. The prisoners won’t sit to analyse the atomic behaviours and the gossipers around me won’t stand to demolish terrorism. The correct arrangement shall wait to be clicked. 

Assecon

ASSECON

(Anonymous)

There must have been times when you would want to visit, or say kind of feel like being in someone else’s body, to see the world, to see yourself from the other person’s prospect or the vision, or to measure the joint functionality of both the brains and how you both would think simultaneously. Like, staring at a random person, an inferior, say, a beggar and imagining how he sees himself at the moment. At his situation. What is it? If there’s a slight nod from your side to it, what is that stops a feeling so intense? And most importantly, where does the boundary of us and our consciousness end? If the answer is, the boundary of the body itself, well then, what is it that let us imagine being in someone else’s shoes, and yet not own them?

Interesting maybe, but well, to move on and name the kind of a feeling we discuss, I tried and google the right word for it. There hasn’t been any, as what my thirty minutes of search says, the closest one quite familiar, ‘Empathy’. Or the feeling could be too personal to be bothered with any name? Let’s for the sake of this article, call it, ‘Assecon’, as seen from your consciousness.

As our race are being as they say, ‘impure’ over the years, we certainly have got our hands restricted to being touched to the certain powers that we might possessed at some point of the civilisation. And here I talk not of any flying human but the rational powers, the exchange of energies and thoughts, probably, the tool that would have, at times overcome the insufficiency of any spoken language. Though the vocabulary grew and the words filled the places of the feelings, for sure there would be a word for a feeling you and I share in the article and soon, it would be long gone. I don’t talk of Assecon but a more commercial one. There could be two ways of sharing a feeling, one, of the era we live in, to go to someone and tell them you are hungry or, to look them into the eyes and stare. And wait. Just to have any little idea of the purity and the intensity of the later one, try it someday with any animal, and believe me, to a certain extent, be it a fish in the pond.

Back to the point, what draws our boundary of the consciousness? The answer, well nothing. Its entirely infinite. And where do I stand in the world to talk of it or answer. Well, that’s where the line is drawn at the first place. To think of any such line. Let me simplify it a little.

Well, the moment your consciousness left your body to be in someone else’s, you never thought of crossing any line, it was to say, completely natural or believable to you. What the person would be thinking at the moment would of course be one of the many conclusion you might draw of the time you are being in him, or you are imagining being him. The line begins itself with a thought like, “But then, how would I know!” 

You possess the power of Assecon already, like you possess the power of imagining yourself in being someone else.  Soon, that would be gone and the power the humans possess now would soon be like a dream or a magic. The awkwardness limits your consciousness. It’s way easy to write but to practice, but take it as a reminder, all still buries deep inside. 

BEING

BEING

(Anonymous)

There's a being in us that rests until the life goes all normal. Without it being awake, a man lives inside a little crystal with all the basics. The being rises from new experiences, and as it awakens, it questions. Questions what happens while it sleeps. The being asks for his right to be called a human being. What has been your contribution to humanity? What made you marry? What secures your happiness beyond this little family and fortune?

There's no greater sleeping pill for that being than a 'secured future'. Or a degree that shuts the entire risk of rising from the mist. Or a bound time table. And as the ones who speak highly of a routine, mean nothing but of a way to shut that being until life gets itself secured. Yet the being does rise.

As the humanity progressed to excellence, the lust for a basic social life grew upto a point where it became the only purpose. While some struggles to fix in into their own little social ball of crystal, when the time was to actually manage and get out of it, for some, the life barely moves and ends as they live under the command of their hormones, waiting to be awarded with their 'bodily needs of fantasies'. The being sleeps unaware.

BEING BLIND TO WHAT?

BEING BLIND TO WHAT?

(Lakshay Raja)

Andrew is eighteen and has been kept in a dark room for almost a month. He vaguely remembers him being the star in his high school, before he was brought into the room he is in now.

The room resides sixty others. Andrew is not physically tortured, he has barely been touched. But what he says or how he thinks or behaves is contradicted by the others every single time. Andrew doubts if he has ever been right. Andrew struggles to live. 

In the early 1950’s began CIA’s illegal mind control program, ‘Project MKUltra’ that went on for more than twenty years before being halted. 

Ted Kaczynski (sounds familiar?), a child prodigy was among twenty two students of Howard who were the research subject for the experiment. The subjects were shown some images and were asked to write down their thoughts of how they see the picture. The subjects were also to write their beliefs and aspirations. And as the experimentalists had predicted, Kaczynski was close to the best.

Later, Kaczynski was called for the test results. His ideas were read and laughed out. Ted was belittled based on his report. The experiment on Kaczynski went on for three more years. 

Ted Kaczynski is serving an eight year sentence in a maximum security prison.Soon after graduating from Harvard, Ted settled down for a simple life, away from the access to even electricity. Between 1978 and 1995, he engaged in a nationwide bombing campaign, ultimately killing a total of three people and injuring 23 others.

Project MKUltra was more of a dummy scenario of what happens in most of the classrooms and workplaces. Andrew’s dark room is a corner in his classroom where he sits.

Contradicting on what a person says every single time, just to get the taste of dominance or discarding ‘his’ beliefs for you feel your ideas are more refined is like taking away a possible discovery or an idol from the world. 

There’s an Andrew around you, being dragged into the dark room. Guess who should be the firewall? If there’s something in a person that bothers you, well, do I need to say more?

Irrational Fear

IRRATIONAL FEAR

(Lakshay Raja)

A caveman would fear more of his survival than his son not being what he thought of. A lost shepherd might sacrifice on killing his sheep for the rainfall from the heaven. And a teen with everything would burn his cigarettes up in a fear of his girl being with someone else. 

Nine months old Albert feared nothing. Nothing until he was introduced to the irrational fear. As the part of a case study, Albert was exposed to a white rat, briefly and for the first time. Albert showed no fear and went on playing with the little rat, poking and blocking around its paths. There was no past memory or any story his little brain could think of to arose any rational fear. 

Later, experimentalists went on making a loud noise with the hammer on a steel at the back of Albert, every-time Albert touched the white rat. Little Albert responded by crying and showing fear. Albert feared for the first time and his brain had probably something to make him aware of the danger around him. 

Irrational fear is a state that makes us react unknowingly. Of all the things we see, observe or hear, it generates thoughts that hop around until they get something to relate with. The easiest way to get a reaction out of someone is working over the irrational fears; the way media works. So if I overhear a conversation related to a serial killer on a bus and a news channel throws a related story as a news, it would get both my attention and reaction. But that is a different story.

Try not to pause yourself doing any activity just to let your thoughts wander around the past happenings. That might bring in anxiety or end up in a phobia of something. Growing up in a household you feel is not stable and constant makes you prone to seeing the world as a fearful place. 

The hammer at your back would bang all the time. Just don’t stop playing with that white rat. 

The case study doesn’t show how the white rat reacted. 

I am Albert and I am on a date with my love. The hammer at my back is banging. If I end up not being witty, if I end up crying, my white rat would leave. 

The white rat doesn’t react over the hammer, the white rat has its own disturbances.

The white rat has his own irrational fears.