Fresh Wind & Green Grass

Recently I watched two good series about biohacking, Orphan Black and Biohackers (spoiler alert). Initially, I was just curious about Orphan Black because the main actress played more than dozens of characters (they’re clones, by the way). I mean, how can you play so well that we can distinguish each character that shares similar physical features? Anyhow, I found these interesting, and I was slapped so hard on how science can be so wrong. I revisited my article in this blog, The Danger of Science, where I stated that two things are dangerous in science: exclusive science and silence. Now that I’ve watched the series, I think that no standardized moral compass is also one of science’s dangers. Scientists’ vision is to find new things, explore the unknown, and study the unexplored. Some of us think that having such a standardized moral compass may somehow lead to limitations to science, and is that an ethical thing to do for scientists? Who has the righteous opinion to stop a scientist?

Add another series here, titled Zoo, which has a good premise in the first season (the second season onwards is just silly for me), that animals may reach their full awareness and collaborate with other species to destroy humans. But then, this capability includes human involvement. Lots of atheistic beliefs and progress are made by genius scientists and philosophers, but does the God complex itself transfer to these communities? The thought that “we can do anything to anyone or anything as long as we can”. As a scientist focusing on experimental psychology methods myself, this got me thinking at night. To what extent can we experiment on humans and animals? Is it ethical that I got my cat trained to be lazier and not to catch birds anymore?

If we expand the discussion, the God complex seems very innate in humans. Our higher cognitive ability makes us (probably) the only non-predatory species that reach the food chain pyramid. We can make technology that protects us from beasts and predators to create complex food technology so that even if we lack meat, we can make a hamburger from mushrooms. Ever since the river valley civilizations began, we’ve been developing this complex to the smallest elements in life. Me, for example. I manage several jobs at once, so I make my online calendars and other supporting software functions to their fullest. I even installed an automatic timer for my garden. I spent two months researching and trying out several water taps, machines, and connectors prior to the final installation. Now it works, every 6 PM and AM, I don’t need to worry about my garden anymore. I feel the urge to control everything I have in my life so that I would make the minimum mistake.

Take a wider example of domestic abuse. Even with the thought that we want to control our spouse or partner, I think that’s already abuse. Our God complex gives us the desire to control people, pets, and any living beings around. At some point, it becomes abusive, and the other part can die, literally or mentally. Three Idiots and Guide to be a Perfect Family movies portray this phenomenon perfectly. We always forget the old adage that power tends to corrupt. There is no guarantee that when we become parents, our desire for our kids becomes a demand - and it kills them softly. To what extent can we control our own power? Does controlling our power equal to limiting our God complex with our God complex?

And that’s where I think social norms are still important. Even if this norm is a conceptual thing, our dual reality, it gives us a guideline to what our ancestors had experienced before and wanted to warn us to make similar mistakes. For example, in psychology, we always submit our method to an ethical board because the history of our study field is so dark. Take the Milgram, Little Albert, or Stanford Prison Experiments. A good friend once asked, “So what is moral?” I think now the answer is something that prevents our God complex leads us to make foolish, repeating mistakes.

From all the series and movies mentioned in this article, I think the ending of Biohackers got it right: a multimillionaire right wing that doesn’t want humans to be perfect and making Earth more overpopulated, killing his own sponsored scientist who created lots of biohacking experiments to making humans as a perfect species from inside the womb. It’s a beautiful representation of stopping our “what if” inquiries with a proper moral compass.

Today I celebrated my wedding anniversary with my husband. All this time I’ve been married, I am surprised at how more often I was asked why I decided to get married rather than congratulated for being married. I think my friends often see me as a free-spirited person rather than someone that actually really appreciates commitment, but considering how I spent my youth, that view is totally acceptable.

Previously I often felt afraid to write about my marriage and romantic relationships. I had the experience when I deeply loved some people whose minds inspired my works and wrote about them (sometimes in this blog), but then they let me down. At some point in life, I decided to stop relying my happiness on something or someone. That was liberating, very much actually. Blessed me, I found someone that is mature enough to feel the same way while still can appreciate my presence. And that was when I decided to marry that guy.

Someone said to me once that becoming an adult means to take decisions that we never know where they’ll take us. We never know whether we’ll be happier or dismayed, but we take the risk. That sentence, which was said to me in fieldwork - in the middle of nowhere, left a deep influence on me. No one will ever actually guide us in adulthood. Parents will give advice that might work for their generation but not ours. Mentors would never see from our own eyes. Friends would only give some friendly suggestions because maybe they are afraid to hurt you, to tell the truth. So we are on our own. My discussion with my then-boyfriend was that marriage is a good thing for us to learn to be together in this journey and to have each other’s back whenever things go wrong. And that’s all; there was no romantic proposal or flowers. Just a quick discussion after having some personal time to think about it. That’s a decision my husband and I will never know whether it will end sound or be bitter.

After years of spending time with this person, I realized that a healthy relationship is hard work between two people. We came from very different circles and worlds, but we decided to compromise. When I got a call from my lead researcher to get on a plane soon to help him in the field, he let me go because he tried to understand what are the most important things to me. We back each other to cook if the other one is busy with meetings or video calls. We compromise with each other’s weaknesses and take it as a daily joke. He’s not romantic to society’s standard - but I think there is nothing more romantic than when one doesn’t understand the academic world but is genuinely happy when I gets my scientific article published or a funding request granted. Without the need to feel competitive or belittle my smallest achievement, I am sure this is what a healthy relationship feels like. Without the promise or complex conversations on feminism, he always helps with the chores and feels the obligation to share any domestic responsibilities equally. And the best part is that he always takes good care of me whenever I'm sick (my Dad said someone who really loves you is not the one who's there when you're healthy, but when you're sick, and it's true).

I hope it’s not too much to say that I still hang on to my speech at my wedding dinner, that I agreed to marry him because though we have everything in the world to be different, we have similar fundamental values of life, and that’s enough. This is a person that I can say is done with himself, that I would say has a way of thinking similar to an F1 driver that doesn’t want to drive on a public road - because he’s afraid to speed up the car and kill someone. He is my daily reminder to always acknowledge my own limits and what I am capable of, and that is far more important to me for becoming a better human being rather than wordy love letters.

Happy anniversary, my love. I am privileged to have you.

Recently I got a new client that works for a new, sustainable protein source production. This, of course, not the first time I handled a commercial sustainable product, but this got me thinking: do we have an agreement on things that we do every day that we consider sustainable really sustainable? Is this new protein source not a scam or green-washing as many products are?

These are my very personal opinions on sustainable lifestyle - very unfavorable, you might think, but I want to initiate a discussion where we are very skeptical about our decision-making process. 

1. Have fewer children, marry when necessary
   
   Growing up, I am not a fan of marriage for having a lovey-dovey life. I am a crime documentary and drama fan, and I have a firm opinion that there's no such thing as true love. How will you answer the concept of true love when people remarry after being left by their loved ones or when they can marry more than one person? What exists is a true partnership, and it can be platonic or romantic, and it still has a similar importance. What I believe is marriage is a civil union, a bond that governs who can make important decisions at critical times (say, accident or critical surgery), to whom your wealth will be handled when you pass away, and with whom you will share your everyday matters, opinions, laughter, and cries. With this in mind, I didn't have any problem getting married a bit late compared to society's standard, but I know that not everyone is privileged with this.
   
   What I want to say is I found that postponing marriage is a very environmental-friendly decision. Did you know that women that marry at a more mature age will get better access to education, wealth, and healthy reproduction? That it will be related to psychological maturity in parenting? Women who marry at an older age will also have fewer children, so they have a chance to raise their children and have more money to provide better education for their kids. The human population, I think, is the epicenter of environmental problems. Every species on this earth needs food, habitat, and other resources to survive. As the most intelligent being on this planet, the growth of our population has been and is still predicted as a major cause of habitat loss and environmental degradation. By having fewer kids or at least just 1 child per family (or adoption) we will need fewer resources from water, food production, and land conversion for human settlement. All production will be smaller, and we can focus more on human advancement in science and technology rather than basic productions.
   
   I still believe that using a condom made of rubber will always be more sustainable than having an unwanted kid. Unwanted pregnancy has been a source of many mental problems (and mainly always on the mother, not the father) and economic turbulence in a family, and we need to stop this loophole. Up until today, my heart goes to organizations that work for planned parenthood and women's empowerment because that helps the environment a lot.
   
   
2. Diversify our food, eat whatever is available nearby
   
   
   I am a bit fed up whenever I am told that veganism is the solution to all environmental problems. The most important thing that I learned as I grew up is that there is never a single solution to all problems. Did you know that entomophagy is also a solution to save resources to produce protein? And what kind of silly opinion is that saying we can only consume things that don't feel pain when one study suggests that plants also experience pain? How will you tell a family living in poverty, on a remote island where a flight to there from Bali is even more expensive than to Jakarta though the island is closer to Bali, to stop eating lamb or cow in an area where water is scarce, and no vegetable will survive the climate? 
   
   The problem with our diet is production. I have a commodity client, so I am in touch with commodity production calculations on a daily basis. It's scary, but again it makes sense since we need to feed more and more people now. Throughout these years, working in wildlife institution research made me come to the conclusion that diversification is important for ecosystems. When something is dominant, the ecosystem will go unbalanced, and there will be something that falls. I have analyzed many data for my research that I compared with LULC (Land Use & Land Cover) data that shows how scary the land conversion for farming (vegetables!) is. Did you know that potato is the culprit behind Dieng's landslide? 
   
   We can't just ask everyone to eat a single type of food when land is needed for production. Diversification, which I see in religions that ask their followers to eat different food, is somewhat good (e.g. Buddha prefers veganism, Islam orders no pork, and Jews have kosher restrictions). I would say that eating everything (but not wildlife) that's available nearby is the best solution for time being. And if that's not even solving the problem, then we need to go back to my #1 point above.
   
   
3. Buy multipurpose cleaning product
   
   I have been privileged to live on my own since a long time ago, so I have full independence in choosing which products I can use for home cleaning. Being in Bali for 6 years now and having a hobby of cleaning dishes, I am fortunate in how easy it is to access environmentally-friendly products here, so I could make comparisons. My house has a circular water management system, meaning that every drop of water from my kitchen or bathroom will go back to my garden, and that's where I will get water for a drink (I use a water filter and no longer buy bottled water since 2018). I slowly realized how important it was to consider the chemical used in my cleaning products. I started to cross out SLS, paraben, phthalate, and palm oil from all my cleaning products. It's very convenient that now small shops have started to provide a versatile, multi-purpose cleaning product that can be used for the body, hand, dish, floor, and cloth. I can just add small drops of essential oil whenever I want to. I hope these shops are growing bigger and more people will be interested in trying them. We have taken water for granted from the very first-time river valley civilizations that started thousand years ago. It's time to stop.
   
   
4. Manage our own organic waste
   
   Waste management relies heavily on infrastructure, meaning that it's useless if you have divided your trash by type, but the garbage pickup service at your housing complex will mix them up anyway. I have witnessed so many failing waste management programs because there is no infrastructure provided at the end of the customer journey. A similar problem happens in my area; I don't know if my garbage man will divide the waste or not, but the least I can do is have one bio pore infiltration hole, and I always put the valuable yet reusable waste in one bag. I know if I put them in one bag, that will make the garbage man realize that he can sell it again somewhere to be recycled. The most crucial is the organic waste because when it mixes up with reusable waste, then everything maybe needs to go to the landfill. By eliminating this, then it will reduce the number of landfill waste at least.
   
   
5. Pet only domestic and stray animals - sterilize them
   
   Okay, now is a very debatable issue for pets. Studies show that it is only the human species that keep other species as pets. The reason is many, say loneliness and the need for control. But humans are so selfish that it selects the most breed they want on domesticated pets, especially just because it's "cute". I am never a fanatic about any animal, but I choose a cat to pet. He came to my house around 6 months after I moved here, and I found something peculiar on his genitals. I decided to pet and love him, but not other cats. Time went by, and he got a urinary problem and was brought to a vet, and the vet said that he had been castrated. I was just about to sterilize him and kept thinking, who had castrated him? Was it the government or a random vet or clinic that had a stray operation?
   
   At that time, I realized the importance of taking care of stray cats. I taught him to not catch birds or random geckos (and now he's lazy af, a homebody lair, but that's fine), and I support movements to sterilize stray cats and dogs. There was a huge debate on Twitter saying that sterilizing them is ripping away their reproduction rights, but what I know is that feral animals can be a serious problem. Let's take an example in Australia. Feral cats have gone wild and killed an estimated more than 1 million native birds and 1.7 million reptiles across Australia every day. The government made a difficult decision to eradicate them just to be hated by the public. Speaking of reproduction rights, I am a full supporter of planned marriage and pregnancy, so while I am donating to the sterilization campaign, I am also limiting my own self rights to reproduce. When you think about it, sometimes, these not-to-sterilize campaigns for domestic pets are just used by greedy breeders to gain optimum profit by saying that some breeds are expensive and exclusive - while what I can see in all cats is... a cat.
   
   
6. Use a menstrual cup or reusable pad
   
   We can't debate someone's belief when they see a menstrual cup as a virginity destroyer, but there is always a safer choice: a reusable pad. As a woman, I've regretted how many single-use pads I had thrown away and ended up in a landfill. I've been using a menstrual cup, hand-in-hand with a reusable pad, for around two years now. It equals to 3,024 single-use pads (I used up to 4 a day in the first 3 days of my period). Some have criticized the rubber used in the cup or how much water is needed for washing reusable pads, but I see no other options at the moment. I once thought if I sterilized myself, I won't get any period, but that is wrong - so again, it's not a good option for now. It's up to you whether you see a menstrual cup as something against the cultural norm, but the hassle of washing reusable pads is not a reason to stop using single-use pads. I've seen so many personal care products, including diapers and menstrual pads on waterways in my research site, and don't you think it's one of the most disgusting things a human can do? 
   
   

   Baby diapers, just 3 meters away from a river

   
   
7. Clean up our cloud storage
   
   Did you know that Google now has a new regulation where it will reward any website that works fast (under 3 seconds) and lite? Data centers have used 1% of world energy to just run their server, and it's a bad situation for both the environment and their finances. That's why they will now reward good websites and punish bad websites by pushing them down in SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page). This is why I have a regular checkup on my cloud storage (I have so many emails that serve different purposes) and clean whatever that is already obsolete and unnecessary to keep. This looks silly, but as a person working in the digital industry, this is something that I can do for the environment. Using paper is so last year; our trash online is the new environmental waste.
   
   
8. Use electronic products as long as we can
   
   When I was a kid, my dad always taught me to buy electronics that could last for years. Later I found it's not only financially healthy but also environmentally friendly. At the moment, I still use a Toshiba laptop that my previous workplace bought for me in January 2014. I still use it for many data analysis processes until this year, almost all internet frameworks will stop supporting my OS. It still works well, and I even can still use it without any charger cable connected (and I haven't even replaced the battery). Toshiba has even closed its manufacture and support in Indonesia for laptop products, but my laptop is still running well.
   
   I fully understand that many producers now only build products that last up to two years, so consumers will keep buying, and they have cash flow. Nonetheless, electronic waste is worrying, and this is what keeps me to keep minimal when it comes to gadgets. I do regular clean up and check on my devices, making sure that they will run as long as possible until it's not possible again for them to run. I think, as a generation, we need to grow the spirit of maintenance and repair instead of replacement.
   
   

Yoda statue at Disney's office garden in Singapore. Why do we always judge slow and old creatures to be wise?

The interesting question is why do we judge, and how is it important for us? 

At first, I wanted to bring some scientific lectures here, but I’ll skip that. I want my blog to be easily read and understood, so pardon me for skipping the references and citations. I would like to introduce the evolutionary explanation for understanding judgment. Humans have complex and well-developed brain; it is that well that it easily adapts to signals and cues from the surrounding environment. When the signals are more than our brain is capable of processing, it will limit incoming information even faster before we could realize it. Selective memory often happens as a result of this process, and that’s why crime witnesses sometimes can’t be trusted. Our brain is so complex, yet our memory is terrible, and judgment is what we need to be careful of.

Because of the complexity, the brain takes high amounts of energy as it needs blood, water, and other important sources of energy, such as oxygen, to well function. To minimize the complexity of processing information, our brain makes some reduction and effective learning of past information. For example, if you have a bad experience with a dentist for the first time, the next time you smell a room like a dentist's, you will experience a bad mood and tend to want to leave fast. If you go to a shopping mall, and go into the public toilet, find a clean closet in the first restroom you go in, most likely, you will go back there the next time you need to pee. If you had really painful diarrhea after eating curry in your childhood, you would not eat curry for a significant time in your lifetime. All of those processes happen so quickly because the brain wants you to avoid the “predator” that you had dealt with in the past, helping you to make decisions faster. This really helps the human species, and even it doesn’t have to be “your own” experience. If your father was once cheated by Bank XYZ, most likely, you won’t ever open savings or investments in that bank. It’s something that Educational Psychologists call “vicarious learning”.

I personally really like the concept of vicarious learning because it has a really huge influence on Social Psychology, my field of science. People are really vicarious learners. Especially in this digital era, we easily believe others’ judgment and reviews on e-commerce. Even when we want to pick a movie to watch on Netflix, we will google its rating on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb. If we see a video on Youtube with 1.5M views, we will easily believe any information in it rather than a video with 150 views. Our judgment is so easily shaped nowadays. I really remember one thing that a supervisor that taught me digital data analysis said: “Two people can google the same thing but get different results. It really depends on how they create the sentence on search engines and cookies, and that’s enough for the machine to conclude what they believe and what kind of results they like to match their pre-judgment.” So I don’t think it’s weird to see people who really believe in themselves and debate much on the internet with arguments from Google. The machine is helping us to strengthen any belief that we already have and helped create stronger judgment towards one issue. So a pro tip: if you want to be someone who knows a counter opinion to yours, or wants to be open-minded, always Google in incognito mode and clear your cache & cookies regularly. Read from the media that provide different opinions to you, and listen to their facts. This is how philosophers in the past get wiser: they listen to their opponents.

I think having some different circles in life is so important because it helps you to have more balanced opinions. If you’re against palm oil, listen to the people who work there and those whose kids got educational scholarships from the company. If you’re against infrastructure development in rural areas for the sake of “keeping it that way”, ask local people how they should walk miles only to get their National ID, or attend a Monday ceremony in the village head’s office. If you’re against women who decide to leave their marriage, listen to their explanation, not googling “how religion rules women who divorce their husband”. I am not Google, but I can predict what kind of results you’ll get from that query. We so often close our brains to opposite opinions because we’re keeping that to do so. Now, again the question is: why? Why do we tend to be happy with our current position rather than challenge our own minds with different opinions?

There are some possible answers, but the most important, I would say, is energy. Opening up to contrasting ideas is taking up energy that not only our brain will feel fatigued faster but also our body (and it’s proven by laboratory experiments). So I can admit that it is not easy to open up to a new circle, new people, new opinions, and new judgments. The simplification that our brain does is to preserve energy and make humans survive, and opening up to new ideas is a counter-action to it. I found myself in the same difficult situation, too, long ago back in 2015. At that time, I had never had any acquaintance that had a US Republican ideology. Then when I first met this guy in Virginia, I was nervous at the beginning, but then I found myself talking about politics in his house, and I enjoyed the conversation. He made several great points, and it made me understand why so many people still hold to Republican ideology in the US. Then two years later, I had the chance to talk and sit next to Mike Pence on his first visit to Indonesia, shortly after his inauguration as the Vice President of the US.

© US Embassy

I was conflicted inside because all my life, I was surrounded and close to people with democratic ideology, and I shared the same beliefs. How on Earth could I have a public speech in front of him and look him in the eye? But when it happened, it just happened. There was one significant moment when he asked all photographers, media, and his staff to leave the room, and he put down his speech paper and microphone. He said to us that it’s so hard to be told to say some things because you just have to. He also said that in anything in life, you just need to do hard work. I know he is a good orator, but still, that left a great impression of his on me. It’s even stronger than when I met Barack Obama in 2016. At that time, I had the judgment that Mike Pence, someday, would make one move that would make me proud that I had the chance to meet and directly talk to him.

And he did. When Trump acted like a child earlier this month, Mike Pence took control and ensured the handover to Joe Biden went well and democracy was respected. I heard from some media that Trump was really angry with Pence, and likewise, Trump really pissed off Pence. That’s when I knew that there would be a bright side to anyone when we could listen to them and don’t let our pre-judgment take over our brain control.

At the end of the day, the brain is ours. We control it with some effort, energy, and of course - experience. It depends on whether we want to control it by spending a bit more effort or let it control us and do business as usual.

Jew mass in early November 2015, making statement that they don't support Israel in Washington DC

I once read that we live in an extrovert world; introverts (the real ones, not those self-claimed ones) stay as a minority because, in the past, they were unable to find mates and have offspring. In a “warm” collectivist country such as Indonesia, being alone, wandering, and just sitting down and contemplating looks miserable, and we’re unable to have friends. And maybe this creates a belief (that I resent so much) that the smartest people are lonely, brilliant people are unable to communicate, and most autistic people are geniuses. That, in a way, conceives a comfort zone for intelligent people to stay away from the radar, to not try to befriend other people from other bubbles, and in the long run, to make science far away from non-science circles.

This perspective often gives me a situation where I keep questioning why people are so afraid to befriend people from outer circles? Though I could find the answer easily (the older we are, the lazier we want to adapt to new communities and rules), I find this question intriguing. Some people I observe are afraid that other people would misunderstand them, and some others are afraid that they need to explain things in conversation to new people. But I think one key possible answer is that we’re afraid that strangers would see our minds as dangerous because we form different realities based on life experience and where we live one to another.

One example is the life story of Bobby Fischer, a chess prodigy whose controversial statements and acts during his lifetime. Though he came from a Jewish background, he had this kind of antisemitism perspective and expressed his hatred views towards Jews and the United States in public. That was when his career started to sink, and he had to live as émigré. I personally think his mistake is one: he let out his hatred to the public, and some of the subjects of his hatred were living hard and trying to be accepted in the community.

I don’t think that all introverts are geniuses because I’ve seen ones without remarkable opinions. But I do think that lots of people who prefer to be alone hold one dangerous opinion in their mind; that they are able (and should) keep for themselves. These private individuals have a lot of time alone to think and communicate with themselves, creating original but oftentimes difficult ideas to be accepted by others. The difference with the extrovert is that most extroverts are highly skilled in communication because they are often in crowds, so they really know how to communicate their critical ideas.

We all do have dangerous ideas in our minds. I know we all do. Mine is when people put their belongings in public places without calculating their own house's carrying capacity limit. I have another dangerous opinion about how all the mess that we have on the Earth is caused by one single problem; the growing human population, and that shapes me to have negative thoughts towards people whose children are more than they can feed. Of course, I have other dangerous thoughts that are kept in my mind this whole time; and I would never reveal to the public. In psychology, a thought is a thought, and when you make it stays in your mind. We differ in the domains of Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor because it is only you that is able to keep your dangerous ideas as ideas. You are the only one that allows your dangerous thoughts to interfere with your emotion, finding you a motivation to do something that corroborates the thoughts and changes into action. But when things go uncontrolled, of course, a support system would help. I think this is why it is so important to have a rational life partner who really understands how your brain works because they will accept your opinion and prevent you from doing anything stupid because of those thoughts. In my case, I am lucky enough to find one.

So, what are your dangerous thoughts?