MOST PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE OBJECTIVE BUT IT IS ONLY AN ILLUSION

SHABBAT SHALOM FROM A TED MED RESEARCH SCHOLAR UMONHON INDIAN COUNTRY USA

It is a slow saturday morning here in the Reservation of the UmonHon Indians. 
Today is the last day I have to send in evaluations of the 7 speakers assigned to me for evaluation.
It is a long laborious process, and often I end up learning so much more. Because you are looking at the lifelong research work or career of a particular person, sometimes young and sometimes older.
Also once you are a particular site, you are attracted to something similar.
Attributing ones own errors and perceptions to others have recently become much more accepted at the higher levels of the US Government, so I decided to look up the human nature,magnified in some, decreased in others, that makes people feel that they are right, and the others are wrong. even worse, the others are morons who have to be shown the right way.
Years ago, I had read a book called The Practical Neuroscience of Buddha's Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius. It was recommended to me by the only person in Sioux City, Iowa, USA who reads widely, my good friend SA, and I remember that conversation, after which I went and got a copy of the book, which I was fortunate enough to give as gift to that good doctor of Kuala Trengganu,Malaysia  Datuk Menon!

Something like the following I remembered from that book: If you find the behaviour of another person unacceptable or distasteful, please remember he may have 2000 reasons to behave so, and you may know only one or two and dont base your asessment of him on that little knowledge.

Sadhguru the South Indian mystic has also repeatedly mentioned that in his discourses, to be able to live happily with things you do not like is a huge blessing.

The yogic philosophy teaches us to calm down the structural defects in our brain, and I feel that the attachment we have to ourselves and our ways of thinking and ego and self esteem is the opposite side of the coin of finding aversion in the thinking of others and their conviction that they are right when we know or think that they are wrong.

what do social psychologists think about this?
I came across a write up on a Stanford University Psychology Professor in the Journal of National Academy of Sciences , and I cut and paste it here with some comments of mine.

 This influential paper by Ross in 1977 introduced the term “the intuitive psychologist” and explored the various cognitive and motivational biases that people are susceptible to when interpreting data. He also coined the term “fundamental attribution error” to describe the tendency to attribute someone’s behavior to their individual characteristics and attitudes, while underestimating the influence that the actual situation might have had. (quoted from National academy of Sciences)

As an anthropologist I see the bias and its ill effects when doctors confront patients and attribute their illnesses to personal traits or of the group they belong to, whereas forgetting the social and historic determinants of that wrongly accused behavior, very true to the health care given to Native Americans.

This phenomenon involves a concept known as naïve realism that Ross considers to be central to social psychology. “We think the world is the way we perceive it to be, and we expect other people to see it the same way,” he says. “So, when they see it differently and disagree with us, we tend to attribute it to their stupidity, their lack of attention, their lack of information, their biases, or something else that is preventing them from seeing it accurately.”

Conflict resolution

 “You make some progress when people who are frustrated with each other come to see the problem in terms of characteristics that make us all human rather than the unique negative characteristics of people on the other side of the conflict,” he says.

At his inaugural address as newly elected National Academy of Sciences, he explained how liberal and conservative Christians reconciled their belief in the context of their religious belief

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309730/

People with fundamental religous beliefs whether they are christians or muslims or jews, would somehow come to term with their personal  beliefs in society, by attributing it to Jesus or Torah or Quran. We are at least lucky in that we have Talmud which is an ongoing commentary over the centuries on the Torah,and many Jews are Talmudists rather than have absolute faith in the Torah. Right now in the USA there is a discussion whether a Conservative (plus Christian) can support such humanitarian values as freedom of the oppressed (refugees) or expression (abortion, social inequality) without being branded a "liberal" and a traitor, and those who thus confronted find the resolution of the conflict in none other than Jesus, as I am sure the Jews do, as well as the moderate and radical Islamists in their holy book.

so if all of us learned about this theory, or understand the theory, we will not be blaming our friends and lovers for their inadequacy or lack of understanding but rather feel compassion towards them. We also will have more friends and lovers.

American Indians have a prayer:

NEW FRIENDS IN LA HABANA, CUBA

If you cannot make friends in Havana, you better get yourself checked out, something is wrong! It is such a friendly country with such approachable people, such an educated country with people who are not as complicated as the ones who live in richer or other south american countries.

TOURISTS AND THEIR TOUR GUIDE IN HAVANA MARCH 2017

Tourists and The Tour Guide in HAVANA
For fifteen days in the month of March, I had friends visiting me, from three different cultural milieus in USA..A Native American couple from Nebraska, a leisure bound couple who lived by the bay in Miami and a Doctor from Little Rock, Arkansas, who maintained a second home in Puerto Vallarta.
Most tourists bring their eyes and their second eye the camera, but do not see. Some bring their sights and enjoy the people, the first becomes a memory, the second becomes an experience. Memories by nature can be forgotten, whereas experiences add to your character and the sense of having lived.
Also, if you bring your past experience of travel with you, on the outside, you would end up comparing one place to another thus degrading the presence of yourself in the new place. Each place is unique, not because it is better than another. The happiest people I have met in my life were not from richer countries or leading professional lives, but the humble people who are grateful for what they have in their meagre lives. 
Thus comes the philosophy, be humble, be grateful and whenever possible be of help to people. If you are interested more in buildings and the bay than in people, you will neither make a deep attempt to get to know people nor would their welfare be on your list. The young American indian couple, who had been out of the country only once, came laden with gifts for people they might meet, even though they did not know much about Cuba, and the gifts they bought were symbolic of their culture and received with gratitude by the Cuban friends of mine. Americans in general are very generous people, but mostly with material things and to be a traveler, one has to be generous with time
Because in a friendship, the greatest gift is the gift of time.
My short career as a Tour Guide ended on the 18th March 2017 as I wish to host no further tourists to my island.

A SUBDUED ARRIVAL IN THE UNITED STATES FROM CUBA

Normally I am very happy when my flight lands in Miami, and I recollect incidents associated with various spots I can recognize from the air. The main purpose of my visits to the USA is to be with the American Indians and the tribes I visit live somewhat isolated and I want to cushion the change whether I am coming from Cuba or Asia or Europe.
Cuba is an excellent place for human interaction. The last couple of months I have been able to host some good friends. On this visit, two couples, one American Indian and the other from Miami, enlivened my experience in Miami and it was so good to discover new places to eat and drink, and more importantly make so many new friends together.
Here I am, at the Charlotte Airport, at the American Airlines Club and trying to realize that I am in the USA. I am afraid to read the newspaper because of the antics of their new president, who would have thought this august presidency would be comparable to North Korean High Command?
Then I think of the hundreds of Cubans lining up at the US embassy in Vedado, with a slight hope of emigrating to this country, with their dreams and hopes. It is unfair to them that I feel unhappy to leave their country and arrive at the country of their dreams. 
During the past stay in Havana, I realized how grateful people were.. especially my two couple friends and also some close cuban friends as well as some new friends I had made, young university graduates.
I am glad that as of tomorrow I will be sheltered by the kindness of American Indians and I look forward to a dinner with my close friends G/M in Miami before leaving these shores once again in 10 days.

ETERNAL LOVE FOR CHE GUEVARA

There is not a single child in Cuba who cannot recognize the face of Ernesto CHE Guevara de la Sarna Lynch, the only person, an Argentine, who had been granted the privilege of Cuban Citizen ship since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.
I always wondered when did Che enter my life. I think the Latin America entered my life around the same time, Pablo Neruda of Chile, Che, Fidel, Salvador Allende at a later date. Ever since I can remember I remember CHE. so I consider it a great honour to be representing the country that gave him citizenship. 
When I was a Medical Doctor at the University of Miami, I always had a book on Che in my white coat, a bit incongruous in that the Cubans that I took care of were all so contra revolutionaries. 
I have stood at the very same class room at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School where he graduated from. Also the farm where he had spent some time in Missiones, in Argentina.
I am yet to visit Rosario where he was born.
I have been to the Peruvian Amazon near Iquitos where he swam across to see the miserable conditions under which the Lepers of San Pablo de Loreto lived, the lepers built him a raft in which he and Granados floated down to Leticia.
Many years later Leticia would become a favourite spot in my travels, Leticia  in Colombia, Tabatinga in Brasil and Santa Rosa de Lima in Peru share that corner of the Amazon River.
When my brother suggested in 2001 that we travel to Bolivia, i was excited. In the coughing jalopy of our friend Luis of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, we went up to the mountain, called the Tibet of South America to La Higuera and also Valle Grande where we spent the night.
The famous picture of Che with bare chested with a bullet wound was taken at Valle Grande and I found the spot where the photo was taken 

Che was an atheist and I am a non religious Jew so is my brother, we both are Mizrachi Jews, so we said the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish. I was overcome with such emotion. The closest I had come to the spirit of Che.
In Cuba there are many places associated with Che, starting with the chocolate factory in Baracoa and the house of my friend where Che had slept one night when he came to open the chocolate factory, Santa Clara where his remains rest.

Che was a great revolutionary, a true one, and many years after his death, he has become an icon and now he is saving Cuba from economic ruin because his visage has become a commodity.

He was like Sitting Bull, who fought against the intrusion of outsiders to his land, my Omaha Indian sister had remarked.

I am in the Blue House in the Omaha Indian Reservation and there are so many reminders of Che in this house, so far away from something which was/is  beloved to both of us: CUBA

THE BLUE HOUSE AMONG THE OMAHA INDIANS IN NORTH EASTERN NEBRASKA 

The spirit that guided CHE, the eternal forces that guide me, all omnipresent in CUBA, perhaps that is why I feel so good when I am there. 

For a Jewish boy who was destined to live out his life in South Caulfield, Che reminded me (or rescued me?) that superficial attachements would always stand in the way of the greater humanitarian needs and action
CHE LIVES.. in my heart

SADHGURU'S TEN TIPS FOR HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

Like many other things, Philosophy also arrived by the back door in my life. Never took a course in Philosophy but sitting on the banks of the River Seine in 1995, while preparing to give a course in Medical Anthropology, I was handed tools of thinking philosophically. Before then it had been just feeling in the heart, but not an analysis. Gilles de Leuze and Michel Foucault and Jaques Derrida all entered my life. I had become involved with North American Indians and each day with them was a philosophical education. Yoga and Meditation did not arrive until 2008, when a Chinese Accountant and an Indian Odissi dancer introduced me to Yoga and Patanjali. Myanmar, Buddha and Pankaj Mishra's book, The end of suffering all had an impact and one thing became clear
whether looking at it anthropologically or spiritually, el mundo espiritual, the spiritual world is the same for every one, no one can claim superiority, but the particularization to suit ourselves depend upon our culture and our geography. Similarities between what Patanjali said 2500 years ago and what the American Indians believe are stunning.
The same chinese accountant from Malaysia who introduced me to Yoga also talked about Sadhguru and tonight, while the snow covers the landscape outside I was watching some of his talks and impressed how practical he makes the philosophy to be.
The following video I found to be extremely useful for everyday happiness for every one and I could think of so many people, so unhappy with their lives, mostly of their own creation, I wish they could see this video and benefit from it.
Yoga is not a religion in the same way, American Indian belief system is not a religion, but a template for good life on this earth.
I tried to upload the video but it is too large for this blog
Here is the link 
It is about 25 minutes and I urge you to watch it and note down the ten things he is talking about 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ASgYupz0XY